Month: January 2006

Although I live in an area where the night sky is not (yet) polluted with light, I have not learned the constellations. I know the basics, such as Orion’s...

St. Neilos (5th century) composed a discourse (included in the Philokalia) on ascetic practice for the monks under his charge, but the work disappoints the mode...

In the famous poem addressing his dying father, poet Dylan Thomas wrote: Do not go gentle into that good night;Rage, rage, against the dying light. We cannot ig...

In a chapter of his book The World of Silence, Max Picard describes the character of ancient languages as proceeding from silence. The anthropologist might thin...

Faith opts for an object in most Western traditions. Even if objects are accretions from culture and tradition as in the Old Testament or projections of ideal f...

The paradox of active versus contemplative is present in virtually every religious and spiritual tradition, even where only laity exist, for the paradox refers ...

In his wonderful book The Kingdom of God is Within You, Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) relates the story of the Hindu convert to Christianity, a careful...