Tag: peace
Amazing stories of the moment of death
What happens at the moment of death? Many have experiences to relate. Recently, we spoke to a home-care aide, Mary Ann Buchan, of Western New York, who told us how common it is for folks to wait for some sense of completion before turning serene and making the passage. Most deaths are that way: peaceful…. Read More ›
The Spirit of Fear
Do you suffer from the spirit of fear? Most of us would say “no” — until we delved a bit deeper into our own psyches. For fear entails more than we commonly acknowledge. It is nervousness. It is anxiety. It sometimes crosses over into impatience. It involves phobias. None of the above are of God…. Read More ›
Accepting gifts
It was said of Abba Zeno, that from the outset he never wished to receive anything from anyone at all. Those who brought him something came away hurt that he had not accepted anything. Others came to him, wanting to receive some token from a great old man and he had nothing to give them… Read More ›
The way of peace is the way of truth
Here is a statement of Gandhi that sums up clearly and concisely the whole doctrine of nonviolence: “The way of peace is the way of truth.” “Truthfulness is even more important than peacefulness. Indeed, lying is the mother of violence. A truthful man cannot long remain violent. He will perceive in the course of his… Read More ›
His-self
Yesterday he was in a good mood, everything was right with the world and I was great, could do no wrong. This morning he insisted it was evening and did not understand why he had to sleep with his shoes off if he was just taking a nap. So I thought, this is going to… Read More ›
Happiness with no pricetag
There are various ways of being happy, and every man has the capacity to make his life what it needs to be for him to have a reasonable amount of peace in it. Why then do we persecute ourselves with illusory demands, never content until we feel we have conformed to some standard of happiness… Read More ›
The Seed of Solitude
Keep your eyes clean and your ears quiet and your mind serene. Breathe God’s air. Work, if you can, under His sky. But if you have to live in a city and work among machines and ride in the subways and eat in a place where the radio makes you deaf with spurious news and… Read More ›
Embodiment, incarnation, flesh and blood
To age is something good, pleasant (?), well, no (!), for if life is about ‘something’ rather than “chance” then something deeper seems to be a play. What if we are just children at our beginnings, if all that we experience as awful as it is, as absurd as suffering and evil seem to be,… Read More ›
Have you got any saints here?
The story is told of Blessed Basil that, making a visitation of his monasteries, he said to one of the hegemons, “Have you got any saints here?” The Abba said, “Through your prayers, my lord, we all desire to be saints.” And again, Blessed Basil said to him, “No, I mean have you got any saints here?” And… Read More ›
The most important time of life
Getting older is not easy for one by one, aspects of our physical selves are lost that when young, were taken for granted. As we age we are all called upon to find inner reserves that allow us to deal with this slow decline with grace, if not with ease. It is a daily choice… Read More ›