ORDINARY LIFE - Thoughts and Ideas to Help You Live a Happier Life
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Summary for January 26, 2020
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Dear Folks -
I called the talk I gave this week in Ordinary Life -
Going Back In Order to Go Forward
The teachings of all living spiritual traditions call those who seek to follow them to walk a path of both contradiction and contestation. We can’t just “go along with the system” because the system can easily be unjust. If we practice distributive justice, peace will take care of itself. In this talk I tell the story of my encountering Fredrick Buechner’s “The Sacred Journey” and his experience at a monastery where a monk gave him this blessing: “You have a long way to go.” I hear these as hopeful words. Though there is a lot for us to stay mindful of - the end of cosmological dualism and individual salvation, the necessity for a coherent social order in order to create whole persons, and the need for social justice, we already know what we need to do to create a better world for ourselves and others. Real spirituality is to be found in learning ow to conjugate the verbs “to be” and “to love.” That is, we are to love being and to love our being.
That is a brief summary of the talk offered in Ordinary Life. The audio version contains all the asides and ad libs.
You can read or download the text from which I spoke, view the presentation slides, and listen to the audio of the talk using the links below.
If you are reading this, I want you to know how grateful I am for and to you.
Be well and much love,
Bill Kerley
In order to read or download the text of the talk, click here.
In order to view or download the presentation slides, click here.
In order to listen to or download the audio version of the talk, use the link below.