Actually an Artist

Sorry I’ve been so quiet. Life has been busy in all the best ways. Family, work, self-work, spiritual-work. That period of becoming is always a quieter time looking from the outside-in, so if I’m unusually absent, it’s because of this:

https://www.unitedseminary.edu/master-of-arts-in-leadership/mal-spiritual-direction – above is my required coursework. This semester, I’m completing the “Formation” session with the class Introduction to Spiritual and Personal Formation, as well as “Textual Hermeneutics”-Introduction to Religious texts.

There is so much on fire in the world these days. I’m holding these things in my heart as read these texts, turn inward in my class, and nurture that which is growing inside of me. I will leave you with one of the recent texts we’ve read, from the Buddha’s Fire Sermon:

“The mind is burning, ideas are burning, mind-consciousness is burning, mind-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with mind-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs.”¹

I am not Buddhist, and I do not embrace everything in it, however it is hard to not feel like everything is burning from selfishness, hate, and self-delusion. We can do better and we must do better. It is comforting and challenging to me to find texts from thousands of years ago that speak to us now. How do you see yourself fighting the fires of the world these days?

1. Full sermon: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn35/sn35.028.nymo.html ↩︎