Compassion, Interdependence, Harmony . . . and AlohaIn Hawai‘i, embedded deep within the culture, lies the beauty of the spirit of aloha. In its purest form, the word aloha signifies an abiding love for all living things, including the ‘aina or the land. As you come into the sphere of Hawai‘i nei (beloved Hawai‘i), you feel the aloha spirit as an inner calling towards love, truth, and peace. It is […]
Dorothea Dooling
The Grace of Great Things
What in today’s world ministers our most cherished hope and ideals? Where do we seek—and hope to find—in Rilke’s words, the grace of great things? What brings us inspiration and guidance, and in whom can we trust? Strangely, we have come to ennoble the marketplace itself, honoring the free exchange of goods and services, and now, even of ideas, often canned and predigested for mass consumption. In various forms of […]
To Question . . .
Poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes: “Try to love the questions themselves. … Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” To question is life itself. I wrote this ten years ago. And understand it more clearly now, as I likely will find greater clarity ten years from now. Our insights are evolving—always—if we seek […]
What Serves What?
One of my teachers, Dorothea Dooling, founding editor of Parabola Magazine, spoke often about the idea of levels, that there are larger dimensions that cannot be understood by the rational mind alone. Further, she claimed that one of the chief maladies of modernity is found in not acknowledging the existence of levels; that everything is on the same plane, that hierarchies of quality and being no longer exist. In relation […]