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…
Looking for Gold: The alchemy of Cinderella
Once upon a time, “The wife of a rich man fell ill, and when she felt that she was nearing her end she called her only daughter to her bedside and said, ‘Dear child, continue devout and good. Then God…
The Art of Budo
In my lifelong spiritual quest, I have read hundreds of sutras; plowed through pages and pages of philosophical texts; grappled with koan collections; analyzed thousands of poems; searched through biographies; meditated for hours; and interacted with many teachers, good and…
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 pie down at the Koffe Klatch would lubricate my imagination.…
In the Hands of the Sea
I went out into the garden, to the crag, and I sat on the bench and watched the light change in the sea; looking over the fields, the holy well, the standing stone. The mountains beyond the bay were blue with…
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 …
Who Decides History’s Future?, by Alexandra Zaleski
Knights and martyrs. Painting (detail) on canvas from church of Abbas Antonios, Ethiopia. Late seventeenth century. Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris In the Era of Princes, Abyssinia had no…
A Parabola Bestiary: Horses, by Alice van Buren
Bestiaries were traditionally works of observation and natural history. Ancient and widespread, their way of observing allowed room for elements of theology, symbolism, and moralizing that strike our modern ear…
Seeking Verity, by Tracy Cochran
Verity climbed down from the scaffold and stood with me, looking up at his work. I murmured something about how otherworldly the statue looked. “I look for something other when…
The Only Black Person in the Room
Belonging was a concept I could long neither feel nor grasp. Eight years ago while on a yacht circling the Marina del Rey channel, I answered my then white German…
The Unfinished Painting, by Mark Nepo
Lascaux Cave Paintings, ca. 15,000 BC Dreams and art are the smoke signals connecting the one tribe over time. Stories and myths do the same. Often…
The Flight from Disunity: Thomas Merton on Suffering, by Vanessa Hurst
Light Beyond Pain, Abbey of Gethesmani, Kentucky Photographs: Br. Paul Quenon “Some men believe in the power and value of suffering,” writes Thomas Merton. “But their…
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,…
Walking the Maze, by Pamela Travers
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres I n his book Mont St Michel and Chartres, Henry Adams quotes from a letter written by one abbé to another telling…
Daily Life as Spiritual Exercise, by Karlfried Graf Dürckheim
Dürckheim on a morning walk with Swami Prabhupada in Frankfurt in June 1974 (Wikipedia) “There is a story that tells of Meister Eckhart’s meeting with a…
The Esoteric Shakespeare, by Michael White
The Plays of William Shakespeare. John Gilbert, oil on canvas, 1849. Dahesh Museum of Art, New York City “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely…
The Way of the Heart, by Cynthia Bourgeault
Photograph by Brandon Zierer From the Christian esoteric tradition, a path beyond the mind Put the mind in the heart…. Put the mind in the heart….…
The Wall and the Mirror: Forgiveness in the Work of Martin Scorsese, by Kent Jones
Martin Scorsese (l.) and Robert De Niro (r.) in Taxi Driver. Martin Scorsese Collection, NY “If I were God, I’d forgive the whole world.” Robert Bresson, L’ARGENT Three years ago,…
Queen of Angels, by Tracy Cochran
Annunciation, Master of the Louis XII Triptych, c. 1498–1514 We parked in a field and walked half a mile down a road with the other pilgrims,…