Advent holds such a sacred space – the story and formation of the womb is tucked into our souls. Advent is most often thought of as an individual journey, even though we may celebrate together.

“Never in any case whatever is a genuine effort of the attention wasted. It always has its effect on the spiritual plane and in consequence on the lower one of the intelligence, for all spiritual light lightens the mind.” 

We continue our meditations on Evil and Hatred.  To go deeper, to face these realities, we must become stronger.  How do we do that?

Burklo’s book refocuses Christianity away from doctrine and belief to knowing God through mindful practice and the compassionate action that follows from an enlarged perspective.

This is an important book because it provides clear evidence that spiritual practices work. Imagine if the members of Congress meditated before the start of each session.

The practice of contemplating the Stations of the Cross, depicting the final hours of Jesus’ life, is a very old one. Many Catholic churches have gardens or sanctuaries in which the stations are situated.  Each of the 14 stations marks a point along the way to Jesus’ death.

Do you love who you are becoming?  Are you enjoying the giddy delight of tumbling down the flume?  Because in your delight in becoming, the Knower within you will transform your relationship to time, and usher you into the eternal now - the kin-dom of heaven on earth - where there is nothing to grasp, and everything to love...

I teach meditation as an adjunct therapy for mood disorders, and I get a surprising amount of pushback from a sizeable group of people. Many of these people have a strong faith in God and are skeptical of therapies that we in mental health see as only helpful.

In the shadow of COP26 we are meditating on the powerful role that Deep Ecumenism can and must play in the future of the planet.  To get the most out of individual humans and our diverse communities, we must include the spiritual dimension.  That is where the fire of excitement and passion, sacrifice and visions, is lit and stays lit.

Many of us wrestle with fear, despair, insecurity, and loneliness in this time of sustained global crisis. I worry for the future of the human family and life itself. But these times are also an invitation.

We cannot be separate from God or from each other. Yet, we can spend much of our lives imagining that this is the case.

Wisdom not much different than what St Benedict, a founder of Christian monasticism, observed about the contemplative life:  “Always we begin again.” Or what the 20th century Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, wrote about prayer:  “We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners.”  

If one chooses to interpret the story of Jesus fasting in the desert symbolically, the story becomes an allegory of transformation.

  A prayer without desire in it, a prayer without sincerity in it, a prayer without soul in it, a prayer without Spirit

Did you know that human DNA responds healthfully when we enjoy altruistic pleasure (helping others); but our DNA’s expression’s health degrades when involved in selfish hedonistic pleasure?

Christianity has a long history of meditation that for many has been lost. All too often our faith is a series of bible stories and Sunday services and a notion of God taken for granted. Or we find we approach faith as an argument in which we pit ancient wisdom against post-enlightenment philosophy that insists that only things that are verifiably true have value.

What is spirituality? How does it differ from religion? And what role does it play in this modern life?

  "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very

I hold in my consciousness two previously unimaginable opposites; on the one hand the possible even likely extinction of humanity and on the other, the potential for our unimaginable birth of a new embodied divine humanity, the mutation realized and resplendent.

As the coronavirus burst upon the scene, I realized that climate change was only one of a new “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” The storied marauders of old – death, plague, war and famine – had morphed into the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, uncontrolled population growth, and the unraveling of modern civilization.

A meditation for Peaks and Professors students at USC - with Rev. Jim Burklo, Sr Associate Dean, Office of Religious Life, University of Southern California

Andrew Cuomo today is a phenomenon. He speaks every day about the coronavirus and his press conferences have become must-see tv. Why? Many reasons, but at heart he speaks to spiritual yearning in all people, a yearning that focuses not on religion and/or God, but on the truth and depth of our common humanity. 

To several readers, already isolated because of health or age or retirement, I’ve written this could be our “monastic” opportunity to experience the value of being “all-one” (where the word “alone” comes from) as well as resting in God, taking a break and a breath and a breather, especially important resisting a respiratory infection.

Throughout history, humans have believed that deceased loved ones, ancestors, spirit guides, angels, and other helpful spiritual beings operate in our lives and are genuinely interested in our welfare. Notwithstanding the advent of scientific materialism, such beliefs are also alive and well today.

Patience is the amount of time you can remain in acceptance. With you in mind, figuratively, I created a 20-minute total over five days mini-course about patience and accepting reality as it is.

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 

Benedictine monk John Main has reminded me of something I first learned reading one of Gore Vidal’s historical novels. Reading to oneself became a thing only in recent centuries. “The spoken word is the essential medium for the communication of the gospel.”

Religious Naturalism (RN) has two central aspects. One is a naturalist view of how things happen in the world—in which the natural world is all there is, and that nothing other than natural may cause events in the world. From nature we came, in nature we are, to nature we go… The other is appreciation of religion with a view that nature can be a focus of religious attention - the ‘cosmic religious feeling’ as Einstein called it.

A few weeks ago, I went on a pilgrimage to a tree. Yes, a tree. A single, extraordinary tree named Pando. I’ve loved trees my entire life – their height, shade, spread, and grandeur, the distinctive beauty of each one. When I was little, I drew hundreds of pictures of trees. Despite their uniqueness, each individual tree looked remarkably like the others – a thick brown stick with a green cloud-like puff at the top. One tree, two trees, three . . . sometimes I would draw an entire forest of these trunks and leaves.

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