specifically From the Coleman Barks interpretation of Rumi: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense. Reading a lot of Rumi recently. […]
Category Archives: The Inner Life.
Mysticism and Moralism.
20-Aug-11Saint Francis, Nature, and Poverty.
23-May-11Saryaghash I have been reading Thomas of Celano’s two lives of Saint Francis, with all the complicated pleasure of advancing age. In 1973 the Franciscan Herald Press put out a lovely edition of the early writings about Francis, Saint Francis of Assisi: Omnibus of Sources, a beautifully executed book, hardbound, with maps of Italy and Assisi, […]
Dreams.
10-Apr-11One of the consistently impressive things about life in the woods is the enlarged importance of dreams: if you keep to the natural cycle of light and dark you will sleep more, and arise naturally: and these two things are probably enough to ensure that your mind will get some harvest from its natural crop […]
Of Gods and Men.
01-Apr-11I saw the movie Of Gods and Men two nights ago at the excellent little art-house movie theater in Kew Gardens. The movie was not perfect – poorly paced, occasionally indulgent, not quite as intelligent as it might have been – but it was very good, and it affected me. It depicted the monastic life beautifully […]
The Feast of the Conversion of Paul.
25-Jan-11The wisdom of the old churchmen is shown by this most unusual feast, the Feast of the Conversion of the holy Paul. It is the only conversion thus enshrined as a feast of the universal church, though many of the saints had conversions of importance. But Paul’s conversion has a clarity of insight to it […]
Erich Fromm’s Art of Loving.
14-Dec-10I take as true and interesting the following statement of Erich Fromm: There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love. If this were the case with any other activity, people would be eager to know the reasons for the […]
The Life of the Spirit.
31-Oct-10One of the fruits of the past two and a half years in the woods has been a crop of writings about the inner life. I have spent a great deal of time alone in nature; this kind of introspection has been unavoidable. Mostly these reflections have taken the form of long-form essays. Often there […]
“Tell me, you who wish to be under a Law: have you not heard the Law? It is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a maidservant and one of a free woman. The son by the maidservant was according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman was according to the […]
Quote of the Day.
30-Sep-10Lewis refusing consolation on the death of his wife: Kind people have said to me, ‘She is with God.’ In one sense that is most certain. She is, like God, incomprehensible and unimaginable.
On Bad Religion.
18-Aug-10“The thickest veils between man and Allah are the wisdom of the wise, the worship of the religious, and the piety of the pious.” – Bayazid Bistami Thinking recently about Religulous – and the religious error of pursuing religion without first pursuing humility.