The exhausting quest for inner peace

AARP has a terrific magazine with the largest circulation in the world. I was delighted to read a travelogue by Melina Bellows in the March & April 2008 issue. Ms. Bellows, employed fulltime and the mother of two children under four, is offered a five-day jaunt to an Ayurvedic spa in India called Ananda. She accepts.   Read more...

The hundred and forty-eighth Mary Magdalene book in my library is by Betty Conrad Adam, and is called The Magdalene Mystique. In it, she chronicles the establishment and growth of a spiritual community based on the person of Mary Magdalene. To my surprise, she is an Episcopal priest.   Read more...

Communities surrounding the big metropolis of Los Angeles ooze the need for social change. In the last ten years, before I moved to Calexico, I had worked on a petite community of Los Angeles and its social agents. Parents and teachers have shared their concerns and thoughts on themes that transcend the concrete range of learning processes. Parents represented the native voice of the community, a voice that has been silent for decades, nonetheless is prepared to become the representative of the barriohood. Teachers grew up in the aforementioned community, move out to educate themselves and later came back to their roots to educate those who cannot move out.   Read more...

David, A.D. as he has always been called, comes from a southern state in the USA, so speaks with a lovely subtle draw. His family is quite musical, so at an early age that dimension of life imbued his entire being, filling every nook and cranny of his psyche with song. He was so good at music that in high school he joined a professional folk and blues band in which he was the youngest member. He thrived on that exciting life, so when it became time to go to university, he knew academia was not for him. Although his parents expected him to go, he flatly refused. They surrendered to his wishes, so A.D. was fortunate to set out into life with his parents

I did it! Last weekend, I finished my sixth spiritual adventure novel, sent it to my editor, and he started sending me suggestions immediately. We have a meeting scheduled for Monday, so I needed time to consider and make the changes. Well, I did it! Finished about an hour ago and does it feel great.

It got me thinking about deadlines and how so many of them are self-imposed, stressful, and really unnecessary.

Deadline is a word with a dismaying etymology. It comes from prison guards drawing a line in the dirt. If a prisoner stepped over that line, instant death was theirs. Yikes! Are you sure you want deadlines in your life? Not me.

In order to make peace with commitments I�ve made related to time, I�ve upgraded those agreements to timelines, not deadlines. The thing about timelines is that they feel to me like they can be revised, renegotiated, adapted vis-�-vis deadlines which feel . . . well, deadly. Time, that fickle mistress, is elastic and it will work with us if we will work with it.

How real are your deadlines, dear one? Really real? Or are they really flexible?

Allowing time to be elastic and to support us is a choice we can make for peace.

While a stint in the Peace Corps is two years, some volunteers remain committed to their host country well beyond that. Such is the case with former South Africa volunteers Bowen Hsu and Allison Howard, the founders of Kgwale le Mollo (KLM) Foundation. KLM provides an annual scholarship to a student from a rural community in the Mpumalanga province, enabling him or her to attend grades 8-12 at a prestigious private school called Uplands College.

KLM is doing impressive work and I was grateful to have the opportunity to interview Bowen about the foundation.

This arrived in my email box this week.

“When you understand, Susan, that your disappointment in another's behavior or choices always stems from their immaturity, or yours, rather than their unkindness, or yours, it becomes much harder not to keep skipping through life, giddy with joy, smelling the flowers.   Read more...

Toki is a Buddhist priest. He is only thirty-five, but he has a wealth of experiences, more than many have in a lifetime. He belongs to the Jishu Sect, which is one dimension of Pure Land Buddhism. The founder of this branch, which is found only in Japan, was named Ippen, who lived in the late thirteenth century. He traveled hither and yon throughout Japan for sixteen years. He is called the Saint of Abandonment because by the end of his life he had relinquished everything, including the sutras, the holy teachings. They had become so much part of his soul that he no longer needed their outer support. However, inwardly he always chanted “Namu Amida Butsu”: “I surrender myself totally into the Buddha of Compassion”. That mantra was for him the only way to purify the soul completely.   Read more...