To be wild is not to be crazy or psychotic.
True wildness is a love of nature,
a delight in silence,
a voice free to say spontaneous things,
and an exuberant curiosity
in the face of the unknown.

~ Robert Bly

The great lesson

is that the sacred is in the ordinary,
that it is to be found in one's daily life,
in one's neighbors, friends, and family,
in one's backyard.

~ Abraham Maslow

This is the after-elementary-school program being offered by an organization called The Satanic Temple.   It was news to me, but the Satanists I met tonight at the FFRF meeting consider themselves to be atheists.  They do not believe in a metaphysical God or Satan.  Satan instead is a symbol of individual liberty, of the ability we each have to say ( Read more... )

I didn't hear about these women until today. Perhaps you've already heard. Pussy Riot a Russian punk rock band who performed an anti-Putin song in the "main cathedral" of the Orthodox Church. Now they have been held in "pre-trial detention" for months. It is expected that they will serve years of jail time for the offense, which was, in a word ( Read more... )

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy... Our own brain, our own heart is our temple, the philosophy is kindness.
--the Dalai Lama

We evolved to be tribal, and politics is a competition among coalitions of tribes. When people feel that a group they value--be it racial, religious, regional, or ideological--is under attack, they rally to its defense, even at some cost to themselves. The great trick that humans developed at some point in the last few hundred thousand years is ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

There are hundreds of ways to kneel down and kiss the ground.
--Rumi

( Read more... )

This is where I am going in less than 2 weeks. My friends there are traumatized.

Click to view

A work of art is created because there is basic sacredness, independent of the artist’s particular religious faith or trust. Sacredness from that point of view is the discovery of goodness, which is independent of personal, social, or physical restrictions.
-- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

( Read more... )