by Lindsay McLaughlin | Jan 25, 2018 | Contemplations
Photo by Joy Houck Bauer How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of … the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? … One must live in the middle of contradiction,...
by Lindsay McLaughlin | Jan 5, 2018 | Contemplations
As is our annual practice, some of us gathered at the Meditation Shelter in the night of December 31 for a time of quiet, bringing whatever was in our hearts. Once again we walked through a moon-bathed forest to the Shelter, aglow in candlelight and warmed by the...
by Lindsay McLaughlin | Dec 14, 2017 | Contemplations
The retreat we hold annually during Advent and the days leading up to the winter solstice is named for a gift, one among many, that of story. Planning it, I was drawn to the idea that while in the northern hemisphere the winter solstice marks the beginning of the...
by Lindsay McLaughlin | Nov 19, 2017 | Contemplations
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift. –Mary Oliver At dawn my small dining room window framed a patch of gauzy coral cloud pierced by a morning star. As I watched, light wafted from the...
by Lindsay McLaughlin | Oct 4, 2017 | Contemplations
Photo by Linda DeGraf I’ve been taken with a Rilke poem, “Gravity’s Law”, which begins How surely gravity’s law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world. I like the idea of gravity as a flow taking hold...
