I heard an interesting broadcast from the BBC World Service this week. It featured the response of a Buddhist nun, Dang Nghiem, to a man who felt he had been used by those he was in contact with and felt drained and lacking in love as a result. She spoke […] Read more

The last time we mentioned how the beauty of a work of any art, from story to sculpture, or the transparent goodness of another person, can be like a mirror that reflects us to ourselves. The story of Snow White notes that the mirror always told the truth. It has […] Read more

The poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote a poem about contemplating a statue of Apollo, the ancient Greek god and symbol of the sun, healing. and fine arts. Apollo was also, so to speak, for the Greeks, the mirror of an ideal human being. Rilke concluded his poem by saying that […] Read more

As we mentioned previously, the story of Snow White raises the question of how we respond to the red emotions, specifically our tendencies to love and to hate. Like the story of The Two Wolves, this story suggests that a fundamental life choice is between love and hate. Yet because […] Read more

The last time, at the winter solstice, we spoke of light and darkness. While light usually is treated as more positive than darkness, the two are in fact inseparable and one emerges from the other. It is the dark night that allows us to see the light of the stars. […] Read more

“There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” This is one of my favourite lines from the poetic songs of Leonard Cohen. To me, it suggests that in the midst of the experience of our limitations, our vulnerability, our mortality, there emerges the light […] Read more

We have spoken often of our unique identity and of the sacred worth of each person and all that is. Yet at the same time it is good to realize the relational character, the connectedness of everything. This reality is deeply experienced when its apparent absence is felt in times […] Read more

Last week, we spoke of our unique identity, using the image of the unique song that is each of us. We said too that this song, that who we are, is the fundamental gift that we have to offer one another. Using the same image we might add that it […] Read more