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Finding Your Soul

by David Anderson

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Prayer/Meditation

The Heaven of Bread

January 19, 2023 by David Anderson 9 Comments

“Can you get that bread out of the oven?” Pam calls to me. “I think it’s done.” I open the oven door and a soft cloud of heat drifts over me. Then the smell wafts out, wave after wave—the yeasty aroma, the malted perfume, the toasted whiff of . . . I don’t know—heaven. Or […]

Filed Under: Daily Practice, Grace, Heaven, Love, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Reality--trusting it

Falling Down a Wormhole

January 1, 2016 by David Anderson 28 Comments

I’ve been away for a while. Some of you have asked where I’ve been. The thing is, I’m not sure. I do know that almost exactly one year ago my first grandchild was born, and for a wonderful time Dashiell and his parents lived with us during maternity leave. About the time they moved back […]

Filed Under: Change, Daily Practice, Family, Letting Go, Prayer/Meditation, Surrender

Day Number 21,328

January 26, 2015 by David Anderson 2 Comments

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” -Psalm 90:12 I have done the math, and the number of my days since birth is 21, 328. (It’s easy: go to numbermydays.com and enter your birthday.) I don’t suggest you take the Psalm literally, but it’s not a bad […]

Filed Under: Awareness, Breathing, Daily Practice, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation

Tired of All the Noise?

December 28, 2014 by David Anderson 5 Comments

We expect monks and mystics to tell us how important silence is. Gordon Hempton is neither of those. He is an acoustic ecologist, someone who studies the sound of the natural world and seeks to preserve it. In his book, One Square Inch of Silence, Hempton says there are less than a dozen places left […]

Filed Under: Awareness, creation, Daily Practice, Listening, Nature/Creation, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Silence, Uncategorized

Excuse Me, Mr. Buddha

November 25, 2014 by David Anderson 6 Comments

  I spent last week in a monastery praying with Buddhist monks and nuns. It wasn’t as easy as I thought. Every November I take a week of retreat—almost always to a Benedictine monastery. I love to sit in chapel and hear the monks chant the Psalms, to walk the cloister, to sit in the […]

Filed Under: Adult Spirituality, Change, Daily Practice, Prayer/Meditation

A Stroke of Enlightening

October 20, 2014 by David Anderson 6 Comments

One morning a blood vessel exploded in Jill Bolte Taylor’s brain. She felt a deep pain—like a head freeze from eating ice cream—behind her left eye. Slowly she watched as her brain functions shut down—speech, cognition, motion. Jill was a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist—a brain scientist, observing a brain undergoing a stroke . . . from the […]

Filed Under: Awareness, Daily Practice, Happiness, Letting Go, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Seeing, Surrender, Transformation, Uncategorized

Breathing with the Dolphin

September 15, 2014 by David Anderson 2 Comments

“Remember to breathe.” I often say this to people under stress—whether it’s distress or eustress. It’s something I have to tell myself. We don’t have to think to breathe. If we did, we’d fall asleep at night and suffocate in our beds. But like all gifts, autonomic breathing also holds liabilities. We can go months, […]

Filed Under: Awareness, Breathing, Daily Practice, Letting Go, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation

Raids on the Unspeakable

August 28, 2014 by David Anderson 7 Comments

One of the gifts of vacation is to change up one’s prayer ritual. Normally, Pam and I sit for prayer in a corner of our bedroom. There are two chairs, a small table for an oil lamp, a few sacred books, and a timer that sounds a Tibetan prayer bell when our orison is over. […]

Filed Under: Awareness, creation, Daily Practice, Nature/Creation, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation

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