Sacred Time
Time speaks in many voices, many different images and sounds. For the Neolithic builders of Stonehenge, sacred time was marked by the Summer and Winter solstices, particularly the Winter solstice, when, at around 3:50 pm the midwinter sun would set…
Who Are You?
Years ago, when I was a young spiritual seeker, I was invited to a daylong retreat to experience the teaching and the presence of Jeanne de Salzmann, the foremost student of the spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff. The moment she entered…
A Turning Point in the Cosmos
In the Kingdom of Egypt, when a mighty pantheon embodied the forces of nature, the elderly sun died each night and was born anew each morning. Lifted up from the underworld and carried across the nighttime sky by the winged…
And So On
I wanted to write a piece about the obsessive focus on “the present” and how it obscures the Now. Here is how I decided to begin. For the last few years, I’ve had conversation after conversation with close friends about…
Abba, tell me a word
Abba Anthony was living his customary day of prayer and labor in the desert hermitage he called home when a band of seekers paid a visit. We are sometime in the fourth century of our era and in Scetis, the…
The Deepest Silence, by John Roger Barrie
Alphonse Osbert (1857-1939) Au coucher du soleil, 1894 The eloquence of the deepest silence echoes from the eternal. Originating there and reverberating through the ripples of…
Seeing and the Yoga Sutra, by Dolphi Wertenbaker
Patanjali statue, Hardiwar, India Exploring an ancient teaching on liberation The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali is the foundational and earliest text on yoga. Dating from about…
The Art of Cleaning, by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and Hilary Hart
Girl Sweeping. William McGregor Paxton, 1912. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts In the busyness of our contemporary life we are drawn into ceaseless activity that…
How Do We Reclaim The Heart Of Humanity?, by Trebbe Johnson
A Report on the 2015 Parliament of the World’s Religions It was a pilgrimage of reparation, undertaken by a few people who shouldered the burden of an act that had…
Lessons from Lucifer, by Tracy Cochran
Lucifer Statue, Madrid “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” ―John Milton, Paradise Lost…
Ayni: Living Life in the Round
“Today For You, Tomorrow For Me.” This is the meaning behind ayni, a living Andean philosophy and practice that awakens a balanced and harmonious relationship between nature and man. In…
Healing the Wounds of War
In contrast to our modern situation, traditional and indigenous peoples had extensive spiritually and communally based warrior medicine, practices and lineages. They lived immersed in and part of nature and…
We Begin Where We Are, by Jan Jarvis
Traffic circle in Recke, Kreis Steinfurt, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany A Gurdjieff Group in the world In his book All and Everything, G.I. Gurdjieff presented what he…
Testimony
The day finally arrived when my faculty advisor asked me to choose a topic for the Master’s thesis in sociolinguistics. What to do? Maybe some coffee and a piece of…
The Monkey and the River, by Mark Nepo
A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains. (detail). Wang Ximeng, 1113 When people are at a loss, the guide ferries them over. When one is (awake), one ferries oneself. —Hui-Neng …
Altar Girl
Altar Service Mass, St John’s Cathedral, Norwich, 2019. Photograph by Roman Catholic Diocese of East Anglia Jacinia breezes along the aisles, gathering kisses from the ladies seated in pews. Bendición,…
Maidens & Monsters, Betsy Cornwell
The Deeper Meaning of Fairy Tales “Little Red Riding Hood”, Jessie Willcox Smith, 1911 Don’t stray from the path. Don’t disobey. Don’t eat the apple, the…
The New Year, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
Transforming repetition into renewal Marc Chagall (1887-1985), “The Shofar,” 1911 The conjunction “new” and “year” is in itself a kind of inner contradiction, for a year is something that repeats…
Cosmos in Stone, by Hélène Fleury
Photo by Alec Foege Hélène Fleury and a group of co-workers, the Association Archéologique Kergal, have made a study in depth of the European megalithic sites,…