Spiritual Reflections

Taoist Tradition

We are born gentle and weak. At death we are hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and filled with sap. When they die they are withered and dry. Therefore the stiff and unbending are the disciples of death. The gentle and yielding are the disciples of life.
Lao Tzu
from the Tao Te Ching

The road home, O God, seems long
and at times is difficult and painful.

Grant me a holy communion, a compani9onship with others,
as I journey homeward to you.

I live in times of great trial:
an age of change sits at my door.

I unite myself with ancient memories that sleep within.
Ancestors of long ago whose fears have left their fingerprints upon me,
remind me of my holy communion with that river of humanity
that flows through my soul.
May this flame be my autumn sacred fire.

Inside this visible world is another hidden world, the subatomic world. The term used to describe what happens inside this subatomic world is quantum vacuum. Amazingly, 90 percent of each atom is empty space, a vacuum. And the electrons and particles inside each atom appear to be whirling around as they come forth from “nothingness,” only to again disappear back into it.

Starving with a Full Pantry
One of my favorite authors, G. K. Chesterton, in his preface to Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, summed up my belief about wonders when he wrote, “The world will never starve for wonders, but only for want of wonder.” Paradoxically, this insightful sentence was used as an inscription in 1944 on the General Motors Building at the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition.

The Womb of Wonders
The Englishman Richard Blechynden ran the tea concession at the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904. On one very hot Missouri summer day, not a single fairgoer stopped to purchase a cup of hot tea at his stand.

In these summer days when you next enjoy eating watermelon, recall a saying of the followers of the Prophet Mohammed: “A watermelon produces a thousand good works!” This Islamic saying originated when watermelons were mostly eaten out-of-doors so, their seeds dropped to the ground to become the source of countless new watermelon plants.

Psalm of the Miraculous Holy Waters

Jerusalem’s sacred pool at Bethesda,
whose hallowed waters healed the sick,
O Lourdes’ miraculous spring
whose waters wondrously cure cripples,
O Ganges, holy river of Hindu India,
whose primal waters wash away sins,
what can you offer this poor pilgrim,
homestuck and hungry for healing?

Psalm of the Liberty Bell Prayer
Hear, O Lord, the sound of my liberty bell,
along with my prayer that rings out
my personal declaration of independence,
the liberty I seek from all that now enslaves me.