Money, Anxiety and Abundance
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Ongoing political controversies about homosexuality and abortion rights could give you the impression that the Bible is bursting with guidance about same-sex relationships and family planning, but actually it says less about sexual morality than it does about financial morality.
The Stretcher and the Swan
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I drove by an accident the other day. Emergency services people were putting a woman on a stretcher. They were tender, attentive, capable. She was being taken care of. Traffic was directed competently around the wreck. Read more →
Summer
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Where I live, summer’s keynote is abundance. The forests fill with undergrowth, the trees with fruit, the meadows with wild flowers and grasses, the fields with wheat and corn, the gardens with zucchini, and the yards with weeds. In contrast to the sensationalism of spring, summer is a steady state of plenty, a green and amber muchness that feeds us on more levels than we know. Read more →
Dog Days
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Everyone needs a spiritual guide: a minister, rabbi, priest, therapist, or wise friend. My wise friend is my dog. He has deep insights to impart. He makes friends easily and doesn’t hold a grudge. He enjoys simple pleasures and takes each day as it comes. Like a true Zen master, he eats when he’s hungry and sleeps when he’s tired.
The Wellspring of Decency
The wellspring of decency is loving this life in which people die, people suffer, there are limits, and we make mistakes. The wellspring of moral action is not utopia, not a counterfactual vision, not a declaration that the world could and should be otherwise. Rather, it is a deep affirmation of the joy, richness, and blessing that the world is.
Gratitude
Often I have felt that I must praise my world
For what my eyes have seen these many years,
And what my heart has loved.
Abundant Life
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San Ysidro creek starts somewhere high in the Inez mountains above Santa Barbara, California, and it falls through a boulder-strewn stream bed down to the bay and the Pacific Ocean. It is a dream of a creek, bubbling, dancing, pouring; sun-dappled and butterfly-haunted, laced with blossoms and grasses for which I have no name. In February, which is when I know it, it is in spate, swift with the melted mountain snows.
From Your Minister
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My daughter did a science report on potassium, and we were discussing what to put in the closing paragraph. I asked, “What do you think is the most interesting thing about potassium?” She thought for a moment and said, “Well, we’re never going to run out of it!”
REsources for Living
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Abundance seemed like a totally logical theme for this July-August issue of Quest. After all, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere it’s a time when farmers’ markets are full of fresh fruits and vegetables, a time of sunshine and swimming, a time for vacation and camping and the pleasure of being with family and friends. Hopefully, that’s what you’re in the midst of right now.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven!