by David Anderson
The original word for repent is not so much lost, as destroyed in translation. Wherever in the New Testament we see the word “repent,” it’s a gross mistranslation of metanoia. The problem seems to have begun with Jerome, who in 382 translated the Greek New Testament into the Latin Vulgate. When Jerome got to Matthew […]
by David Anderson 4 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Change, Daily Practice, Grace, Lent, Mercy, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Seeing, Surrender, Transformation
Question One: What more did I think I wanted? We don’t think of Ash Wednesday as a time to reflect on happiness. Isn’t it about sackcloth and guilt? But Ash Wednesday is set apart simply as a day to ponder this one fact: We came from dust, and we return to dust. When we accept […]
by David Anderson 16 Comments Filed Under: Blessing, Daily Practice, Faith/Trust, Gratitude, Happiness, Lent, Letting Go, Love, Nature/Creation, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Reality--trusting it, Repentance, Surrender
“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 […]
by David Anderson 9 Comments Filed Under: Daily Practice, Grace, Heaven, Love, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Reality--trusting it
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 […]
by David Anderson 28 Comments Filed Under: Change, Daily Practice, Family, Letting Go, Prayer/Meditation, Surrender
“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 […]
by David Anderson 2 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Breathing, Daily Practice, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation
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 […]
by David Anderson 5 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, creation, Daily Practice, Listening, Nature/Creation, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Silence, Uncategorized
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 […]
by David Anderson 6 Comments Filed Under: Adult Spirituality, Change, Daily Practice, Prayer/Meditation
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 […]
by David Anderson 6 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Daily Practice, Happiness, Letting Go, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Seeing, Surrender, Transformation, Uncategorized