Daily Life as Spiritual Exercise, by Karlfried Graf Dürckheim

In the Middle Ages people were well aware of the inexhaustible power that arises simply from sitting still. After that time, knowledge of the purifying power of stillness and its practice was, in the West, largely lost.

The Rose, by Malcolm Guite

A white rose opens in a quiet arbour
Where I sit reading Dante, Paradise
unfolding in me, opens hour by hour […]

Surrounded by Water and Dying of Thirst, by Lambros Kamperidis

“As I commute to work every day, I leave behind a quiet country road for a highway that takes me to the city. Nature still persists for a while, then gradually thins out, as I draw closer to a mechanical environment that encroaches on my whole being with its steel façade, its noise and quickness.…

The Buddha Calling the Buddha, by Kinrei Bassis

“Most of us are like a fish caught in a hook. The Buddha is trying to reel us in; the hook holding us is our deep spiritual longing. We spend most of the time struggling, not wanting to be reeled in, not wanting to let go of all the things that we are desperately holding.…

Verbum Ineffabilis, by Anita Doyle

“Before she could speak, my daughter taught me the language of silent things: fruits, flowers, an oaken chair. I came to understand, through my relationship to this small being, why the word adult forms the root of adulteration and adultery. Watching her, it became apparent that, as we mature, we fall from grace of the…

Portfolio: Barney Taxel, Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland

From the Photographer: I began to seriously consider a project about Lake View Cemetery shortly after I finished my book about Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens (Akron, Ohio), in 1999. Within walking distance of where I live in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and rich in manmade and natural beauty, the cemetery was an appealing place to…

The Pipe of Reconciliation, by Joseph Epes Brown

The sacred pipe of the Native Americans is a potent symbol of relationship. Through it the human breath sends to all the six directions the purifying smoke that connects the person to the divine and is the link between all forms of life: mitakuye oyasin, we are all relatives. In the Foreword to The Sacred…

The Soul, Like The Moon

The soul, like the moon,
is new, and always new again. …

The Fellowship, by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski

During the hectic middle decades of the twentieth century, from the end of the Great Depression through World War II and into the 1950s, a small circle of intellectuals gathered on a weekly basis in and around Oxford University to drink, smoke, quip, cavil, read aloud their works in progress, and endure or enjoy with…

Beyond Words, by William Segal

How, indeed, could it be possible for a man, who is limited on six sides—by east, west, south, north, deep, and sky—to understand a matter which is above the skies, which is beneath the deep, which stretches beyond north and south, and which is present in every place, and fills all vacuity? —St. Gregory the…