WHY ARE MURDER MYSTERY SHOWS ON TV SO CAPTIVATING? Why am I hooked on The Closer, Major Crimes, Midsomer Murders, Death in Paradise, and the like? It’s because they tell archetypal stories that re-affirm the truth of one of humanity’s two most powerful meta-myths. The “Myth of Redemptive Violence” is probably the dominant myth of …
Mary Magdalene – What’s in a Name?
MARY MAGDALENE IS THE FIRST WITNESS TO THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS, according to the Gospel of John (20:1, 11-18), but she isn’t the “redeemed whore” of traditional Christian devotion. The Johannine portrait show us, instead, a towering woman of prophetic and spiritual power. The tradition that makes the Magdalene a prostitute grew out of a …
“Life is change. How it differs from the rocks.”
In 1968, Jefferson Airplane released Crown of Creation, their fourth album, in which the political facet of their psychedelic rock became clearly visible. The album’s title track, written by Paul Kantner, blends philosophical insight with countercultural attitude in a song that, in the end, turns out to be a love song. The song’s closing lines …
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René Descartes, Meet Peggy Lee
“EGO” IS IMPLIED IN DESCARTES’ (IN)FAMOUS EPIGRAM: “COGITO ERGO SUM.” In English, it’s explicit: “I think, therefore I am.” I feel it should be emphatic. Intended to be a statement that could not be denied, Descartes’ epigram only holds in a world without Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Sufism, or any form of self-transcending mystical experience. As …
Where Is Heaven?
THE QUESTION IS IRRATIONAL. It assumes the word “heaven” refers to an actual place. For more than 2,500 years, however, rational thinkers in the West have known heaven to be a mythic location, not a physical reality. Our image of heaven is a survival from a primordial model of the universe in which the earth …
Reading the “Secret” Language of the Word of God
BIBLICAL LITERALISM VIOLATES BIBLICAL TRUTH. Retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong calls it heresy. Literal interpretations of biblical texts miss the mark because they assume most of the texts are straightforward reports of facts. In doing so, such interpretations ignore the literary genres of the texts they interpret. Let’s consider the literary genres present in …
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Moonlight Shines in the Darkness
FOR THOSE WITH EYES TO SEE, the symbolism in the Gospel of John invites us into remarkable, even transformative encounters. The gospel’s prologue, for example, proclaims a light in the darkness, a light the darkness doesn’t overcome. Many see this to be an image of the sun and the invincible solar hero, but I feel …
Living the Questions
Lurking in the background, behind our everyday concerns, are those “big questions” about the meaning of it all. Who am I? Who are you? Where do we live? What lies ahead? What are we supposed to be doing? Answers to these deeply human questions are offered by our wisdom traditions, by our spiritual giants, and …
Soul Spirit Wisdom 