If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

 

While incontestably a mystic, Meister Eckhart, “from whom God hid nothing,” was also very much a man of the world.  His was a very active life as both an administrator and an exceedingly popular preacher. His essential conviction was that there is an essential unity of the divine and the human – in each person there lies a “little spark” of God. This union with God lay in pursuing an awakening – a “breakthrough” – in which one seescreation as God sees it, indeed, in which one would see with God’s own eyes! For Eckhart, such a breakthrough is not only the potential, but the call, of every person, however busy they might be!

For this year’s Valentine Ginny Agnew is offering Eugenides’ national bestseller which explores the illusive nature of unfulfilled love: our favorite kind of love tale. Deep longing, after all, represents our eternal search for God.

 

 

The miracle stories of the New Testament have the same form as Rabbinic parables where a profound truth is presented as a miraculous event. The purpose of that form of teaching is not to have us believe in magic, but to help us realize the mystery that undergirds our everyday experience.  Because we find some of the same lessons in religions that predate Christianity, we may draw closer to the meaning of the miracle stories by comparing the Christian version with its earlier form.  The primary purpose of this series will not be to study history, but to discover how these ancient symbols might illumine our lives today.

Thursday Luncheon

 

Gratitude is a power that drives the human spirit to transcend resentments and the other negative emotional detritus of a lifetime of self-absorption. Gratitude emanates naturally from one's commitment to making humility a high priority. This commitment to humility is not false modesty, but is rather one's fervent dedication to knowing the self as one really is. True self awareness then brings with it the concomitant blessing that is genuine humility, and genuine humility gives rise to the perspective (or worldview) that might best be described as an attitude of gratitude. And from this attitude happiness almost invariably follows.

Wednesday Luncheon (3-part series)

 

Each age has its teachers, and Rumi is one of them, one of history’s perfect human beings.  He is one of the greatest Islamic scholars, and is the best-selling mystical poet in the West. He united all his life with the thought of God and the practices toward humanity that this thought manifests. Thus he became one of the greatest teachers of universal love and peace. Rumi utilized the reed flute, music, lyrics, and poetry to call and collect people around his message of love. There were many people of other faiths around him, listening to him and respecting him for what he was teaching. This series will explore Rumi’s teachings and how they can speak to our own world that is in so much in need of the Love of which he wrote and experienced.

Is it possible to restore life balance over lunch? We'd like to think that such mindful changes can happen in small moments, so why not at lunch?