• Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Essays
    • Conversations
    • Epicycles
    • Poetry
    • Book Reviews
    • Podcast
    • Web Exclusives
    • Photography
    • Film Reviews
    • Notes
    • PARABOLA in Translation
  • Community
    • Authors
    • Editor Blogs
      • Tracy Cochran (Editorial Director)
      • Lee van Laer (Senior Editor)
      • Patty de Llosa (Consulting Editor)
      • Luke Storms (Online Editor)
    • Donate
  • Subscribe
  • Digital Editions
  • Store
  • Podcast
  • About
    • Masthead
    • Contact
    • Submissions
    • Support PARABOLA
Parabola
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Essays
    • Conversations
    • Epicycles
    • Poetry
    • Book Reviews
    • Podcast
    • Web Exclusives
    • Photography
    • Film Reviews
    • Notes
    • PARABOLA in Translation
  • Community
    • Authors
    • Editor Blogs
      • Tracy Cochran (Editorial Director)
      • Lee van Laer (Senior Editor)
      • Patty de Llosa (Consulting Editor)
      • Luke Storms (Online Editor)
    • Donate
  • Subscribe
  • Digital Editions
  • Store
  • Podcast
  • About
    • Masthead
    • Contact
    • Submissions
    • Support PARABOLA

John Shirley

About the Author

John Shirley is the author of Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas (Penguin/Tarcher), and novels such as Doyle After Death (HarperCollins/Witness) and The Other End.

Author Archive Page
HOW GOD BECAME GOD: What Scholars are Really Saying About God And the Bible

HOW GOD BECAME GOD: What Scholars are Really Saying About God And the Bible

April 28, 2016By John Shirley

“We have been thrown into this world without knowing why or how. As people sometimes say, “I didn’t ask to be born.” And you didn’t (at least as far as you can remember). But you are here, and you have to deal with it.”

Read More »

Read More »Book Reviews

HELP SUPPORT PARABOLA

Help support Parabola by making a tax-deductible donation. Your support is deeply appreciated. Read More »

the Spring 2019 issue

In his heralded poem “Burnt Norton,” T.S. Eliot speaks of “The still point of the turning world,” a near perfect expression of Change and the Changeless. Eliot attended lectures in 1920s London by the Russian philosopher P.D. Ouspensky, featured in this Spring 2019 issue of Parabola; no surprise as the search for that still point is a perennial spiritual quest, one that has inspired seekers from the Buddha to Thoreau, Thomas Merton, and countless others including G.I. Gurdjieff, Ouspensky’s own teacher. Read more>

SUBSCRIBE

Seek & You Shall Find

Connect

We'd love to connect with you on any of the following social media platforms.

Future Themes & Submissions

Summer 2019
The Wild
Editorial Submission Deadline: March 1st, 2019

Fall 2019
Mercy and Forgiveness
Editorial Submission Deadline: June 1st, 2019

Winter 2019-2020
Abundance
Editorial Submission Deadline: September 1st, 2019

See our submissions guidelines here.

  • Popular
  • Archives
Stephen Weiss, MD, portrait of Brother David Steindl-Rast, Mt. Saviour Monastery, Elmira, NY

Learning to Die, by Brother David Steindl-Rast

The only point where one can start to talk about anything, including death, is where one finds oneself. And for me this is as a Benedictine monk. In the rule of St. Benedict, the momenta […]

The Art of Cleaning, by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and Hilary Hart

The Art of Cleaning, by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and Hilary Hart

Housework as spiritual practice, from a Sufi master

Marion Woodman

Marion Woodman and the Search for the Conscious Feminine, by Patty de Llosa

“The true feminine is the receptacle of love. The true masculine is the spirit that goes into the eternal unknown in search of meaning. The great container, the Self, is paradoxically both male and female […]

Hearing the Cries of the World, by Mark Nepo

Hearing the Cries of the World, by Mark Nepo

This story is so old we don’t know who told it or who it’s about, except that it speaks to all of us. We no longer know if it was a “he” or “she” at the center of the story. […]

Karen Armstrong

To Go Beyond Thought, an Interview with Karen Armstrong

One bright spring day, Parabola met with Karen Armstrong  in her suite at the Parker Meridian hotel in Manhattan.  The petite, friendly 62-year-old British ex-nun, arguably the most influential commentator on religion in the English-speaking […]

Parabola: The Search for Meaning : Free Complete Digital Index, 1976-2019

Parabola: The Search for Meaning : Free Complete Digital Index, 1976-2019

The Gurdjieff Foundation of Illinois has generously assembled a free searchable index for Parabola magazine readers. The index will allow rapid and in-depth access to any topic/author/title covered by over 40 years of Parabola‘s publications Read More »

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly Newsletter.

  • Home
  • Advertising
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
© 2019 Parabola Magazine.