Meditations for the Heart, Mind, and Spirit

Mystery might be the only real certainty. We cannot fully trust ourselves. How many times have we felt completely confident of such and such only to later discover we were self-deceived? We are often most ignorant of what is closest to us, Nietzsche noticed. There is so much we do not know. And there is so much we will never know before time swallows us whole. What lies ahead for us is largely unknown. Where we come from is also unknown. Origins and destinies are dark. And fo

There is no meaning beyond that created by creatures. How could there be? Meaning-making is an animalistic phenomenon, a concoction of consciousness. A tree has no desire to know the meaning of it all. And a cloud is quite content to float along without a purpose-driven life. Human beings are not so fortunate. Like a junkie incessantly seeking a high, so humanity as a whole is obsessed with meaning. Yet unlike a drug addiction, meaning-making is not necessarily a problem—so l

“People should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write,” Kurt Vonnegut Jr. once said. Anything can be an art. Cooking. Renovation. Conversation. What makes something art has not so much to do with what is done but how one does it. Merely going through the motions of an activity, of any sort, can never be called art. But when the passions are engaged, along with our creative sensibilities, as well as the

Contradictions are a vital substrate of the soul, a marbled interiority, often subtle, secretive, and conveniently missed when they are personal, our very essence riddled with a wondrous collection of tensions we barely notice if all is well, yet easily unearthed by the tectonics of loss and grieving, passionate life and living, and the generally unsettling nature of being and becoming. When you lose a loved one, you may become overwhelmed with feelings of unspeakable sorrow,