Category: Consciousness
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A Juxtaposition
The Wordsworth poem reminds me that we are all made of ‘star dust’. We’re made of exactly the same atoms as everything else in the universe. These atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, sodium, chlorine and magnesium were created millions and billions of years ago in the nuclear furnaces of massive,…
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Voices in the Wilderness of Time and Space?
“Welcome to planet Earth – a place of blue nitrogen skies, oceans of liquid water, cool forests and soft meadows, a world positively rippling with life. In the cosmic perspective it is poignantly beautiful and rare; but it is also, for the moment, unique. In all our journeying through space and time, it is, so…
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A ‘Renegade’ Bishop and God
The recently deceased Bishop John Shelby Spong stayed in the Episcopal Church, though no longer able to accept many traditional teachings at face value. To be true to themselves, people must either leave, or seek change from within. Choosing pursuit of change, Bishop Spong wrote the book “Unbelievable” in which, like the reformer Martin Luther,…
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“The Great Mystery”
“The Great Mystery” rightly says the also great physicist and thinker, Albert Einstein. But there are still too many people who imagine they alone know everything about it. That’s a hubristic folly, that can sometimes discount and even menace the rest of us. A lot more humility, width of receptiveness, and open-mindedness would better serve…
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Elgar the Enigma
This is an invitation to revisit two sublimely beautiful and meaningful pieces of Elgar’s music. One is mostly misunderstood, while the other is uniquely revelatory. First is “Nimrod” from his ‘Enigma Variations’. Let’s un-attach it, briefly, from the November Cenotaph observance, where It seems ‘custom-built’ to fit the remembrance of Great Britain’s part in two…
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A Hand Shake across Thousands of Years
When caves are mentioned, some of us may still imagine unwashed, unshaven, grunting brutes lumbering about, dragging women behind them by the hair. These hand prints from the Cave of El Castillo, made at least 37 centuries ago, tell a different story. Let’s think about how movingly astounding they are. Early humans worshipped the Earth…
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Baba Yaga – The Fascination of Folklore
A Russian person, seeing this 18th century Norwegian house, would recall Baba Yaga, who lived in a house on chicken legs. Baba Yaga was an ogress with raggedy clothing, crooked teeth, a hunched back, and a long nose that touched the ceiling when she lay on her bed. Her house on legs could turn itself…
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Let There Be Light !
The Greek philosopher Thales had an idea that was right and wrong. He thought there must be one thing from which all others were made, and decided this was water. It’s one thing, yet it can be solid, liquid or gas, and it’s essential for life – dead things dry up. That was a reasonable…
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