More than any year in my (admittedly short) life 2020 felt interminable. I feel like I aged at least a decade that year, and talking to my friends and family I don’t think I’m the only one. So much has happened, so much has changed; how are we to make sense of it all? One…
A HUMAN MEANING PROJECT
Latest articles
Year Two: A Chance to Explore with Us.
I am both humbled and, at the same time, paradoxicallysurprised and not surprised by the overwhelming response to our online presence here at SPOKE. I had built a foundation for a high-quality web magazine exploring human meaning prior to starting our first live “Human Meaning Exploration Group” – an 8-week small group intensive that met…
A Call to Wake the Sleeper
Jesus’ Sayings Read as Zen Koans ____________________________________________________________________ This problem is easily recognized by Zen Buddhism. It is for this reason that Zen does not ask the practitioner to earn their own enlightenment, for how can enlightenment come from the self when the self lies sleeping in the vale of illusion? Rather, the practitioner is…
Matisse Revisited
I have loved Matisse forever. I considered naming my daughter Camille, well…you get it. I’m happy with Camille and so is she. But I first saw Matisse’s Jazz (cut-outs which are pretty simple but amazing) at the old SFMOMA with a group of high school students I had brought there for a retreat. We had stayed…
Navigating Through Meaning
Humans are symbol-making, symbol-using, and most importantly, symbol-needing creatures. Our capacity to engage life symbolically is what creates our cultures and ultimately, what makes us human; however, it is also this capacity that makes life an uncharted quest for meaning that few are taught to navigate. Why is it that humans seek marriage, reputation, outward…
Pushing Through Suffering…
…entering the Other Sides of Human Meaning. The work of Dr. Edith Eger. Why did I survive? What is the purpose in my life? What meaning can I get from my suffering? How can I help myself and others endure the hardest parts of life and experience passion and joy? Dr. Edith Eva Eger wrote…
At the Deepest
A group of us have been participating in a 9-week discussion on human meaning for my husband’s seminary coursework. We each chose a book to read as a launching point to consider some human-meaning experiences, often through suffering, and we were each asked to complete a project. Mine is in the form of a letter…