It’s the holiday season. Time for the lights and warm glow of Christmas, the joy of family gatherings, the celebration marking the end of one year and the beginning of a new one. Plus, to bring the mood down a small notch, it’s also a time for New Year’s resolutions. In years’ past, each member of my family has made a list of three New Year’s resolutions on January 1. There have been resolutions that have been easy to pull... Read more
It’s the Christmas season, the time of the year when we engage in cherished family traditions. Baking holiday cookies. Hanging stockings by the fireplace. Unwinding with a glass of spiced eggnog. Well, in the Rapsas family, we have another unique tradition that started many years ago. Lighting up the plastic baby Jesus. I am a runner and four or five days a week, in the dim early hours of morning, I jog around town. My path seldom varies. I stay... Read more
How would you view the world if you knew that everything was a manifestation of God? If you could see God in all people and all things this holiday season, might it change the way you viewed those you encountered, and the experiences you had? My first exposure to religion was through the Catholic church. I attended weekly catechism classes through the 7th grade and Sunday services until I was about 17. My perception of God was much like that... Read more
Are you becoming more and more aware of your advancing age? Ever wonder if you’re making the most of your life? Or do you fear that something integral may be missing? If you can relate to these questions, then Thomas Moore’s book Ageless Soul is required reading. As you may know, Moore has written for decades on various facets of the soul and in this book turned his attention to how aging impacts this deepest part of our selves. He reminds us that... Read more
What if you trusted the flow of life enough to completely let go? What if you stopped making decisions and began saying yes to whatever life brought your way? Would life unfold the way it was supposed to—instead of the way you forced it to happen? These are the type of questions that led Michael A. Singer to try something he called The Surrender Experiment. It’s the title of a book he wrote several years ago that details the amazing twists... Read more
The question at the top of the page comes from Arthur C. Brooks, author of the recent book From Strength to Strength, Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. It’s something Brooks asks his students at the Harvard Business School to get their attention. He goes on to say: When I tell my graduate students, who are mostly in their late 20s, to contemplate the fact that they have 50 or 60 Thanksgivings left, and... Read more
Elsa Barker was an accomplished author in the early-1900’s when in 1913, something extraordinary happened. She began hearing the voice of a friend, the Judge David Patterson Hatch in her head. Barker was unaware of it at the time, but Hatch had just passed away—and had begun speaking with her from “heaven.” The voice startled Barker but she began dutifully jotting down what she heard. It turned out to be a compelling first-hand report of what happened to Judge Hatch... Read more
One of the smartest, most insightful writers I know is Maria Popova. For 16 years, she has been writing the thought-provoking and life-affirming blog now called The Marginalian, but for years known as Brain Pickings. Each week, she dissects the work and ideas of a range of creative thinkers, from Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking to obscure illustrators of children’s books to literary figures like Whitman, Steinbeck and Sontag. Popova recently posted a column titled 16 Life-Learnings from 16 Years... Read more
In a recent column, I talked about the 4 stages of life that make up the Hindu varnasrama system. As a refresher, during the second stage, we pursue social, professional and financial growth. And while some people get stuck at stage 2, many of us move to a third stage where we begin to focus more on our spirituality and faith. A slightly different system comes from the philosopher Daisaku Ikeda and his book Unlocking the Mysteries of Birth & Death,... Read more
We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through all the time…but the problem is, we don’t see it. ~Thomas Merton In The Rebirthing of God, the theologian and spiritual teacher John Phillip Newell tells us how we might go about reconnecting with the Divine. Newell, who identifies as a Celtic and a Christian, believes that “God is the Light that flows through all things,” and “everything originates in the Light of God.” For... Read more
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