Attachment and Engagement

Here are thoughts for a rainy day from a practicing agnostic Christian Buddhist. I have been struggling of late with the third noble: suffering is the result of attachment. I think what I got hung up on was the antonym of attachment: detachment. Detachment denotes aloofness. Visions of a monk in a cave come to […]

Noteworthy

I stumbled onto an old album by Pete Seeger at the Sing-along Sanders Theater. The album covers many traditional and folk songs. As the name would imply, the audience sings along. One song in particular just released waves of pent up emotion coursing thought my veins. It was “Amazing Grace.” I was at my desk, […]

Kinda Prayin’

I must preface my remarks today with an observation. Love has become an almost meaningless word to me. It is so ubiquitous in our lexicon that it can refer to hamburgers, sex or a lifelong commitment. So I am going to stop using it. For today’s entry the word I will use to convey my […]

I’d rather laugh with the sinners, than cry with the saints

The older I get the more I think that I may not be compatible with heaven. It is most assuredly not for a lack of information. I have heard about heaven and hell for all of my life. I have spend most of my life surrounded by people that knew beyond a shadow of a […]

A Generous Idolatry

I have been thinking about Idols a lot recently (not the Paula Abdul kind). The second commandment says you shall not make carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven or above. If you go with the narrowest interpretation of the commandment, it would be pretty easy to keep. I do not […]

Vergence, Part 3, the Practice

I start this entry by describing the best class of my undergraduate years. It was my final semester and I was taking 19.5 units. By that time, I had completed all my religious studies and I had only upper division psychology classes, including my thesis left. Oh, and one pesky general ed. class. I needed […]

Vergence, Part2, My Faith

So I am culturally a Christian, but pluralistic in practice. Can I say I believe anything? Dogmatically, no. But here is my best attempt at explaining what it is I believe and how that fits into a Christian context. There is a force, a wind, the spirit that is the energy at the core of […]

Vergence, Part one, the Journey

So what the heck DO I believe in? Since joining Imagine about a year and a half ago, I have gone from an ice cold stage, through a period of complete disorientation and now at long last, I think I am emerging into a new spring renewal of spirituality. But what of faith? My personal […]

Human: Individuals or Organelles?

When I was in High School, I worked summers at a day camp. Most days we went on a field trip of some sort. On one particular day, we went to a local park. We started to play kickball and all of the counselors participated. It was a particularly hot day, so I kicked off my […]

Thou or It?

My spirituality has taken a radical shift since becoming a hypocritical agnostic. I say hypocritical because I am not a very consistent agnostic. Since entering the winter of my discontent, I have distanced myself from the god of my past. But oddly enough, I am experiencing a kind of spiritual renaissance. While I see less […]