Tag Archives: Doctrine & Practice

Namaste' readers. After this weekend's Coffee Talk I discovered I have something to say about silence.

I believe we are given experience of a thing so that we can hold a truth of compassion close to our thoughts and heart.

Some parts of our sacred Scriptures are best understood with the head; through our thinking function. An example is the well known passage which begins with "Consider the lilies of the field..." There, we are invited to consider; to reflect; to ponder; to think. Our spiritual understanding grows through considering reality as it is.

For about 10 days now, I’ve been wrestling with the worst cold of my life, including my first ear infection in about 50 years. To say that it has affected my hearing would be a gross understatement. My wife has threatened to hurt me if I ask one more time, “What did you say?”

As a preacher, I talk for a living.

Writer Jim Downard responds to the first question from our "Ask An Atheist" feature. A reader asks, "What's the difference between an atheist and a new atheist?"

In the beginning, humans recognized they lived in times of darkness and light. They observed the movement of the sun across the sky. They discerned patterns among the stars in the same sky at night. They asked questions: why am I here on this land and not in the sky; where did I come from, where did the sun, moon, and stars come from, why is there a separation of day and night, why do other creatures on this land look different from me, etc.

My anger with God comes from not being able to escape from God’s presence. I feel too much God and it is overwhelming. It is difficult to strike a balance between living a daily routine of food preparation, household chores and driving between the kids’ schools when I feel constantly called into prayer and study.