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Chattering Mind

Nice editorial from David Brooks in The New York Times yesterday on how to develop a public policy that might bolster the brain power of our children. He concludes–surprise, surprise–that love is all they need. “Kids learn from people they love. If we want young people to develop the social and self-regulating skills they need…

My friend Nell Minow introduced me to the most marvelous “contemplative photography” website last night. It’s called “Miksang,” a word that means “good eye” in Tibetan, and it was launched by Nova Scotian photographer Michael Wood. He blends his own photography “practice” with what he’s learned over the years from the dharma art/nature of perception…

“…we must understand that meditation, the centerpiece of the Buddhist path, is itself the most radical kind of political action. Why? In meditation, we step out of the value system of the conventional world and start to look at things from a fresh viewpoint. Meditation is not activism as we usually think of it, yet…

“If you’re trying to figure out what’s coming next, turn off everything you own that has an ‘off’ switch, and listen. Make up some plans and be willing to change them on a dime. Identify your heart’s truest desire and don’t change that for anything. Be proud of yourself for the work that you’ve done.…

“During Gemini’s transit, the Sun sails toward its northernmost limit on the horizon. North is a cardinal direction which in many cultures represents “knowledge and wisdom”—and so your journey in Gemini is also towards gaining more knowledge. Gemini takes us to the Summer Solstice (June 21), when the Sun slows to an imperceptible pace. That’s…

“Sweetheart,” I said last night while sitting in the dark on the edge of my son’s bed. “When I come in here to wake you in the morning, I notice that you’re all scrunched up in a little ball, like you are very tense.” “That’s because the covers fall off,” he said. “And I do…

“Retreat a la you sounds like big $,” writes CM reader Sharon in response to my post about my five-day retreat last summer. Au contraire! The best, most spiritual retreats at monasteries and convents are sometimes the cheapest! Really! And many contemplative centers affiliated with a diocese or large religious group can accept payment on…

“Sacred and profane. What a gulf, what antipathy there is between those words! Yet all that ‘profane’ originally meant in its Latin root was ‘outside the temple,’ and later, still neutrally, in medieval Latin and French, ‘not pertaining to what is sacred or biblical…civil as distinguished from ecclesiastical.’ At what point did ‘profanity’ come into…

Last Friday evening, I attended a service in honor of my son’s Hebrew school teachers. At that gathering the rabbi reminded us that the weekend always arrives but that the Sabbath (which, as you may know, for Jews lasts 24 hours after Friday’s sunset) must be invited. It has to be welcomed. That got me…

Thanks to CM reader Daria for sending me the link to Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, an organization that helps parents of dying and deceased infants find volunteer photographers to capture their newborn and family free of charge–sometimes during the final hours or days of the baby’s life. The images are so touching…
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