The Parable of the Lost Son (Sons) - Yeshua
"Once there was a father with two sons. 12The younger son came to his father and said, 'Father, don't you think it's time to give me my share of your estate?' So the father went ahead and distributed between the two sons their inheritance.£ 13 Shortly afterward, the younger son packed up all his belongings and traveled off to see the world. He journeyed to a far-off land where he soon wasted all he was given in a binge of extravagant and reckless living.
Christianity and Totalitarianism by Thomas Merton
"A mass movement readily exploits the discontent and frustration of large segments of the population which for some reason or other cannot face the responsibility of being persons and standing on their own feet…”
"The Extraordinary Life of Maurice Frydman" (Biographical Collection)
Maurice Frydman is one of most extraordinary people I’ve ever come across and virtually nothing is known about him. And because of his connection with Ramana Maharshi, Krishnamurti, Gandhi, Nisargadatta, the Dali Lama I kind of view him in my own mind as a Forest Gump of 20th century spirituality. He was in all the right places in all the right times to get the maximum benefit of interaction with some of the greats of Indian spirituality… He was a Gandhian, he worked for the uplift of the poor in India, he worked with Tibetan refugees, he edited extraordinary books [like] “I am That,” probably one of the all time spiritual classics.
David Godman interview - Buddha and the Gas Pump (excerpt on Maurice Frydman)
David: Maurice Frydman is one of the most extraordinary people I have ever come across and virtually nothing is known about him. Because of his connection with Ramana Maharshi, Krishnamurti, Gandhi, Nisargadatta, the Dalai Lama, I kind of view him in my own mind as the Forrest Gump of 20th century spirituality. He was in all the right places in all the right times to get the maximum benefit from interactions with some of the greats of Indian spirituality, and at the end of his career he was just about the only person that Nisargadatta certified as a jnani.
So in between all these trips to India’s major gurus, he was a Gandhian; he worked for the uplift of the poor in India; he worked with Tibetan refugees; he edited extraordinary books. I am That is probably one of the all-time spiritual classics. This man for me is, how shall we say, a shining beacon of how devotees could and should be with their teachers. He was just an absolutely extraordinary man. Oh, and he went out of his way to cover his tracks, to hide what he had actually accomplished in his life.
So I have enjoyed the detective work of looking in obscure places and digging out stuff that he personally tried to hide, not because it was embarrassing, but because he didn’t like to take credit for what he had done. So I see this as an opportunity to wave the Maurice flag and say, ‘Look, this is one of the greatest devotees, sadhaks, seekers from the west who has been to India in the last 100 years and I think more people should know about him.’
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“The Love of God and Affliction” by Simone Weil
In the realm of suffering, affliction is something apart, specific, and irreducible. It is quite a different thing from simple suffering. It takes possession of the soul and marks it through and through with its own particular mark, the mark of slavery. Slavery as practiced by ancient Rome is only an extreme form of affliction. The men of antiquity, who knew all about this question, used to say: “A man loses half his soul the day he becomes a slave.”
“God Lets His Children Tell the Story”: An Angle on God’s Violence in the Old Testament by Pete Enns
My seminary Hebrew professor, former colleague, and friend, Al Groves, who is of blessed memory, was a wonderful, honest, and pastoral man. When dealing with the theological difficulties that arise in the course of reading the Bible, Al would say, “God lets his children tell the story.”
"What Did Jesus Know?" by Father Sean ÓLaoire
For a few years in the 1970’s, I was the headmaster of Kipchimchim Harambee Secondary School at the western end of the great Rift Valley of Kenya. I also taught math, physics and Scripture. At one stage we were studying Luke’s gospel and we came upon the story of the boy Jesus being ‘lost’ in the Jerusalem temple. Chastened by an upset mother, we are told that he returned to Nazareth with his parents and was obedient to them. Then Luke adds, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” In an earlier story, the presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple some 12 years before, we read, again in Luke, “And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.”
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Researcher Finds Roots of Fundamentalism in 16th Century Bible Translations by Emily T. Simon
The English Reformation — heyday of religious change — spurred a fundamentalist approach to Bible reading, according to new research by a Harvard professor.
“Evangelical reading habits after 1525 were disciplinary, punishing, and even demeaning,” says James Simpson, Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
The Blind Men and the Elephant
A folk tale from India that teaches intercultural awareness by illustrating how different perspectives lead to distinct points of view.
Long ago six old men lived in a village in India. Each was born blind. The other villagers loved the old men and kept them away from harm. Since the blind men could not see the world for themselves, they had to imagine many of its wonders. They listened carefully to the stories told by travelers to learn what they could about life outside the village.
“The Bible — a Two Edged Sword” by Keith Basar
The centrality of Scripture (at least from the Protestant perspective) is surely a double edged sword. Hey, it’s God’s word! Isn’t this what us Protestants were taught? The final authority, sola scriptura. Actually, if we pry a little deeper, that notion of “Gods Word” (the Bible) is suspect.
Feeling Left Behind by Age? These 5 Buddhist Truths Will Change Everything
A WISE OLD MONK LIVED IN A REMOTE MOUNTAIN TEMPLE.
KNOWN TO VILLAGERS FOR HIS KINDNESS AND WISDOM
OVER THE DECADES MANY SOUGHT HIS ADVICE
AND HE GUIDED THEM THROUGH THEIR STRUGGLES.
ONE DAY A YOUNG DISCIPLE ASKED MASTER,
“DOES IT NOT SADDEN YOU THAT WHEN YOU PASS AWAY
PEOPLE MAY FORGET YOUR NAME?”
The Illusion of Our False Self by James Finley (second piece is – “Thomas Merton, abridged and adapted from “New Seeds of Contemplation“)
Guest writer and CAC faculty member James Finley continues exploring insights on the true self and false self that he gleaned from Thomas Merton.
In the following text, Merton makes clear that the self-proclaimed autonomy of the false self is but an illusion:
Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.
This is the man I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.
“The Wandering Taoist” — story by Solala Towler (transcript from YouTube)
The cold wind blowing off the western desert ruffled the beard of the old man riding slowly atop the water buffalo. It whipped around his traveling cloak and made him shiver deep within his robes. He tried wrapping the cloak a little tighter around his shoulders but it did him little good. It was a bad time of the year for traveling, but that could not be helped. The stolid beast plodded on slowly toward the frontier.
A horse would have been faster, but this beast was steadier, more surefooted in the mountains and ate very little. He supposed it was a bit of reverse vanity that prompted him to travel on so humble a mount, the last vestige of the once proud royal archivist.
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“God’s Violence in the Old Testament, (part 2) Possible Solutions” by Adam Hamilton
How do we resolve the moral and theological dilemmas that confront us in these Old Testament texts? As I see it, there are two broad paths forward.
The first—and the only option as I see it, for those who hold to verbal, plenary inspiration—is to accept that these commands and stories accurately capture what God said, what God did, and what God commanded his people to do. Then the task is to explain how the character of God revealed in these seemingly harsh and violent texts is consistent with the character of God revealed by Jesus Christ.
Was Jesus Feminine? by Jordan Gandhi
In the long history of Christian thought, there have been (if not frequent, at least notable) writers who emphasized the feminine side of God. Philip Sheldrake writes that “in premodern theology, motherhood and fatherhood were understood as gendered social roles of care and responsibility. For early Christians such as Clement of Alexandria (third century) and Gregory of Nyssa (fourth century), God is both a powerful father and a tender and nurturing mother” (The New Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, 449).
LOVER AND BELOVED: Mystical Love in Sufism (excerpt) by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufism is a mystical path of love. The Sufi is a traveler on the path of love, a wayfarer journeying back to God through the mysteries of the heart. For the Sufi the relationship to God is that of lover and Beloved, and Sufis are also known as lovers of God.
Have We Misread the Bible? by By Steve Chalke
...There’s an erosion of confidence in the authority of the Bible in our society, which Dawkins’ words tap into. It is reaching critical levels, not just among those beyond the Church, but also for many within it. I have lots of conversations with Christians ? young and old ? who, from different starting points, all want to talk about the same problem: their struggle with the text of the Bible...
Lost in Translation - The Problems With Sola Scriptura by The Hidden Orchard Project
For some, Sola Scriptura is a cause for celebration, but for others, this doctrine paved the way for some significant problems down the road. How is this doctrine different from the native worldview of Jesus and the Apostolic community?
“The Soul of Education” by Thomas Moore
In our day, most people seem to think of education as stuffing the mind with facts and training the body with skills. Brain and hands. The purpose is to prepare a person to find a good job and make a good living. But the result is that we have a population that can do specialized work but doesn’t reflect on the bigger picture—the nature of things, how to become a person, how to love and relate, how to be in community, where to find meaning, and how to bring up children. The human side of learning is generally left to experience and unconscious experimentation.
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Meister Eckhart, Part I & 2: God’s Participation in Creation (Center for Action and Contemplation)
Meister Eckhart (1260-1327), a German friar, priest, mystic, and renowned preacher, was also an administrator—prior, vicar, and provincial—for several Dominican houses. My fellow Living School faculty member, James Finley, suggests this engagement in the “ways of the world” makes his teachings more accessible to us all: “They do not require that we lives as a hermit or go into the silence of the cloister in order to open ourselves to the experience of God’s oneness with us.” [1] Busy people can be mystics.