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THE DILEMMA OF BRUTUS

Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar has many memorable lines, but none more so than “Beware the Ides of March.” As it is, today, the 15th of March, I would like to highlight one of the most important themes of the play, which is the dilemma of Brutus.

An

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THE TOWER OF BABEL

This morning we had a discussion about the passage in the Bible in Genesis chapter 11 which is the story of the Tower of Babel. The story is simple enough. The people of the Earth gather and meet in harmony and set to work to build a city and a tower

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OPENING ONTO A BROAD VISTA

Many Modes of Spirituality
The contemporary world is such a confusing place. We have available to us a greater plethora of ideas than perhaps any previous age. The spiritual treasures of the whole world and much of history are spilled out at our feet

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WHAT IS A SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY?

Living Together
A community is a group of people living together. There might be many reasons why people might live together. Humans are moderately social animals. There are advantages in living together, but there are also problems. A group living t

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Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite

Translation, notes and metrical explanation copyright 1997 Elizabeth Vandiver; all rights reserved.

Iridescent-throned Aphrodite, deathless
Child of Zeus, wile-weaver, I now implore you,
Don't--I beg you, Lady--with pains and torments
Crush down m

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DIOGENES

If there anyone I envy,
it’s old Diogenes, dog that he was
and I more a cat.
But… Oh to be in a world
where such naturalness
was possible!
I hope we have a few sparks in common.
Like that honest man, I am a citizen
of nowhere in particular.
Which polis? “Co

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WITH FIRE IN THEIR HAIR

I've been reading The Bacchae by Euripedes. It is the only extant play based on the rituals of Dionysus in which women went in groups into the hills and engaged in orgiastic activities under the influence of wine. The theme of the play is the punishm

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SECRETLY PUT DOWN A DEEP ROOT

In the practice of spirituality, there is always an interesting tension between form and spontaneity. Too much form can easily become empty hypocrisy whereas too much spontaneity can easily become self-indulgence and dilettantism. The sage Kuya once

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HAVING FAITH IN FAITH

1148771593?profile=RESIZE_320x320Faith is Part of What We Are
Spirituality requires us to have faith in faith. This faith-in-faith is well-founded because without faith we could do almost nothing and we would certainly be a great deal the less. We have to have faith in faith. On the

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FAITH AS A RATHER HUMAN FRIEND

The conclusion I have reached and that serves me best is that the basic default setting of life is faith. The snail proceeding across the garden lives in faith that she will reach the cabbage. It may be that all manner of misfortune may prevent her d

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LESSONS FROM POOH

I have recently been reading Winnie the Pooh and, among other things, it is a wonderful account of everyday small mindedness. Pooh is the personification of greed. If the chance of getting "a little something" comes along he immediately becomes obliv

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A FIRE FOR ARTEMIS

This evening I lit a fire for Artemis. She is the goddess of wild things. On our land she has dedicated to her the most wild part, the forest area including 'the Enchanted Wood'. There is something unreachable about Artemis - especially if you are a

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IT IS GOOD TO PRAY

It is good to pray. There are many ways and many meanings and I shall describe a few. When you organise your living quarters, make sure you include a place for holy things. When you arrange your garden, create places for contemplation that are inviti

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HOW PHILOSOPHICAL ARE YOU?

In our modern times of academic disciplines that count it a virtue to be value neutral and clinically distant from their subject matter, philosophy has tended to become an abstract and abstruse intellectual game which the ordinary person has great d

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