hope – Page 2

Toward Wholeness, Not Happiness

February 6, 2019

You might have heard: I’ve stopped trying to be happy. Rather than orienting my life toward reaching some island of happiness I’m not sure exists out there, I think I’ll try to foster something different in my life. I think the best word to describe it is wholeness. Happiness for most of us is based on the prospect of having our “ideal life.” It is a place to which we must travel – a place “out there.” Like I said, I’m not even sure it exists. If it does, it appears and then vanishes out from under you. And it’s conditional on your circumstances – it’s the old “I will be happy if I can just…[fill in the blank].” Wholeness is not conditional or fleeting. It is available in the present – all the time – whether you have your ideal life or not. It doesn’t depend on your circumstances. Healing, grace and hope are available no matter what. And once those things are growing inside you, no one can take them from you. Read More

Creating Something Beautiful: The Synthesis of Our Pain

January 24, 2018

Creativity is the only thing. We all enter these states of confusion, disrepair and darkness at times. These can be particularly distressing if you don’t know what they’re about – what you can mine from them or what their meaning is in your life. But the secret is in the sauce: making sense of and meaning of your brokendownness. It’s about what beauty you can make from the ugliness, the despair. All beauty emerges from darkness. What else is life about? Read More

Perfume Genius – Normal Song

May 20, 2017

#WhiteHelmets

January 2, 2017

I am captivated by this story about the white helmets (watch the first 12 minutes of the video above). This takes place in a different world than the one in which most of us live. It is a different culture and a different political climate: a dictatorship in which the dictator seeks to bomb his own subjects into submission. People are not even safe in their own homes. This is not the first regime of this kind in the Middle East, but it is a far cry from the relative comfort we enjoy in the west. Yet compassionate humanity is juxtaposed with the darkest violence and cruelty.

What strikes me about this group of rescuers is their willingness to risk their own lives for the chance to save others. This is not the only story of humans giving up their lives for one another. I write about all who have chosen to risk life and limb for others. Anyone who has put themselves in the position to sacrifice for others has reached a level of spirituality to which we can all aspire: they have given their most precious life for something they believe in. As they sacrifice their lives, they say to us, “There is something that exists beyond life that is more important than life itself.” This is what gives our lives meaning. We might be tempted to think they are foolish to risk their lives depending on their cause, but we can also not help being inspired: “Could I be that brave?” The unmistakeable meaning that is demonstrated in such selfless sacrifice is that love trumps all. Our connection with one another is worth dying for. Read More

When Bad Things Happen

September 24, 2016

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When bad things happen, it is easy for us to feel as if God has abandoned us or is punishing us, even though it is clear good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. We sometimes start to feel guilty or as if we need to change course when bad things happen since we think if we are “doing things right,” we should be rewarded! Yet the sun rises on the evil and the good and rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous. Basically, it’s a crapshoot. The fact that bad things are happening to you does not necessarily mean you have done something wrong or you are headed in the wrong direction. It could, but sometimes it means you’re headed in the right direction. I often tell people (usually when they are setting a boundary or trying on some new behavior), “If it’s difficult, you know you’re doing it right!” People don’t usually like that. 🙂 Read More

The Importance of Hoping

August 12, 2015

Do not neglect to hope. Hope is the thing that can draw you into your new life. I am not saying everything will be perfect, but so often we just settle for what we have, not being able to see past the dark, looming forest before us. Hope comes in handy especially when you feel like you are in a rut – in a relationship or in your job, for example. If you go to work everyday or just try to get by in your family everyday, putting up with the same old tired patterns, you will get depressed. On the other hand, you can craft new responses to the same old situations, thereby creating a new cycle that will hopefully lead you to a different and better place. Hope is the vehicle. If you have a dearth of hope, you will lack creativity as well, which is needed to design these new responses. Each of us carries this hope. The small flicker sometimes just needs to be fanned into a vibrant flame. Read More

Listen For The Sound

April 22, 2014

If you listen, you can connect with this voice which is underneath all the things that normally fill our senses. It is happening on a different wavelength, a different plane, but you can tune in to it if you have some patience. All the things right in front of us and all the things people are saying tend to distract us from it and sometimes we forget it is there, but our minds and souls are meant to be in a state of resonance with it. Call it the real reality, call it process, call it “what is really going on”, call it the eternal – whatever you want. It is real and it is that which our spiritual practices help us to access. Our spiritual practices are there to help us push back all the distractions and noise and tune in to reality. Read More

Rest Is Coming

April 14, 2014

It is also true that rest awaits. I believe C.S. Lewis said somewhere that man has the capacity to endure suffering only as long as he has to – that once the suffering has ended, he will have the experience that he could not have possibly endured one minute more. This is the other thing that makes our suffering bearable: we know there is respite when it is finished. This day will end at some point and you will be able to sleep. This week will end in a weekend. This season of life will eventually pass. Some day, the suffering will abate. At the end of it all, there will be rest with a certain finality. Read More