Parinama

    This is what the spiritual journey is all about. Our spiritual journey consists in nourishing and watering and caring for this God-seed that is in all of us.  Matthew Fox Nourishment of the soul supports our living with fullness, love, and tenderness for ourselves and others.   Money, livelihood, friendships, even health would lack meaning without the soul.   By soul, I mean the part of ourselves that is more than our bodies and minds, the life force coursing through all things that connects us to the great mystery of life. It is the part of ourselves, the deepest part, that remains untouched by all of our losses.   The soul is that part which cannot be tarnished by neglect as it belongs to God. When I sink back into an awareness of soul, my experience of the world opens up.   Day to day things become holy, the getting up and sitting down, the sun on my face, the help for a friend.   Even the irritations, the impatience...

  The longing to be in the mountains again came to me unexpectedly.   Grace pulled me back after a long time away into their grandeur, wildness, and the immense physicality of the challenge. The beloved soaring cathedrals of the White Mountains are where I spend most of hiking time along with some travel to the higher mountains out West and Canada and a recent long trek in the Himalayas. I am as thrilled now as I was 40 years age when I first backpacked by their beauty and strength. I am still surprised when I am able make it up a tall peak.   From the bottom, it looks like it will be impossible to get to the top.   But I set out anyway, not knowing for sure how far I will get, taking one small step after another to see where I might end up.   I am always surprised and excited when I make it to the top.   But I am no longer hiking to get to the peak.   I hike as a spiritual practice, a pilgrimage, t...

  It is a difficult time for so many of us now with the chaos being unleashed in the country.   While we do not know what kind of resistance will emerge, what will be effective, what will be torn apart, some are already suffering.   Children are being separated from parents, thousands around the world will not receive life-saving medicines, many fear retribution, scapegoating, shaming. Millions worry about their jobs, research they have been developing over many years coming to a halt, their children’s education. I have lost funding at work and work has become harder as we censor our languages.   Beneath all of this, day to day life unfolds as if on a parallel universe. I have the same small and larger worries and irritations. Joy still comes unexpectedly.   I am moved by something precious, beautiful, invigorating.   My heart trembles in the same ways to music, loving, glimpses of the divine.   There is still the awe of life itself...