• Meditation Puppy

      Molly brought her new puppy to group meditation with the 7th graders at The Boggs School. Gotta admit, he was a bit of a distraction from meditating but Louie sure knows how to spread the love!

  • Our New Year’s Resolution

      Over 120,000,000 people voted in last year’s Presidential election. 96% of the individuals who voted did so in person. Our guess is that if you consider the commute to the polling location, standing in line and the act of voting itself, it likely took an average of an hour and a half to get the job done. We wanted to share a few thoughts regarding this reality. 1.) Voting is the lowest common denominator of true engagement. While voting is important, true responsibility of citizenship requires engagement beyond an hour and a half commitment. The very nature of voting implies asking someone else to do something for you, rather than figuring out what you can do for yourself and/or others. 2.)  If those 120,000,000 voters mentioned above offered an…

  • Sacred Contracts

    January 2017 Book of the Month New York Times bestselling author and medical intuitive Caroline Myss has found that when people don’t understand their purpose in life the result can be depression, anxiety, fatigue, and eventually physical illness—in short, a spiritual malaise of epidemic proportions. Myss’s experience of working with people led her to develop an insightful and ingenious process for deciphering your own Sacred Contract—or higher purpose—using a new theory of archetypes that builds on the works of Jung, Plato, and many other contemporary thinkers. Read More

  • On Love

      I have a beautiful garden in my backyard. The woman who helped me plan it made it clear that we needed to have a diversity of flowers in the bed. We laughed a lot during the planning – you see, I happen to really love lilies and other July blooming flowers. Debra reminded me that I wanted a garden that flowered throughout the year. And, she was right. In the spring, I have tulips and daffodils, in the summer I enjoy my lilies, in the fall I have mums and in the winter berries. Love is born out of allurement – a gravitational pull toward something. This allurement or attraction is related good smells, a soft touch, a pleasing image, a shared laugh. Love is born out of this…

  • On the Distinction Between Love and Desire

      Feelings of love can sometimes seamlessly merge with feelings of desire. Culturally this connection is continuously reinforced by the media, by conversation, by our understanding of modes of expression. But, in truth, love and desire are distinct from one another. Certainly, expressing our love in a physical way can be meaningful and enjoyable. But it is not necessarily a required parallel action to be pursued every time we feel the stirrings of love deep in our heart. This is not a judgment. It is simply a reflection that is often overlooked in our hyper-sexualized culture.

  • The Invention of Wings

    December 2016 Book of the Month It’s winter break! Thought we’d pick an old favorite novel of ours to dive into… “The Invention of Wings, a powerful and sweeping historical novel by Sue Monk Kidd, begins, fittingly, with an image of flight: Hetty “Handful”, who has grown up as a slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, recalls the night her mother told her that her ancestors in Africa could fly over trees and clouds. That day, Handful’s mother, Charlotte, gave her daughter the gift of hope— the possibility that someday she might regain her wings and fly to freedom.  Throughout Kidd’s exquisitely written story, Handful struggles, sometimes with quiet dissidence, sometimes with open rebellion, to cultivate a belief in the invincibility of her spirit and in the sacred truth that…

  • On Happiness

    Real happiness is found in increasing the happiness of others. In giving to others, we forget ourselves. Forgetting ourselves – even momentarily – allows us to feel our own internal silence. That silence is actually the truth of our nature – pure happiness just waiting to be found.

  • Moving Beyond the Meme

    Popular culture is littered with tag lines intended to lead us to enlightenment. “Live in the moment.” “Don’t be attached.” “Meditate.” “Just Breathe.” “You are who you choose to be.” Operating outside a broader understanding of an articulated spirituality, these abstracted ideas become diluted and meaningless. Like signposts in a desert, they point in the right direction but they leave us without any road to travel. Our new series “Moving Beyond the Meme” will expand on the following abstracted ideas both by offering short blog posts and directing students to our developed book club offerings.  Up first:  On Thinking Thinking is important. It is also complex. In order for you to read this sentence several million neurons needed to fire together coherently. A working brain is an important asset. However, it is not all you are. Thinking is…

  • From Anger to Clarity

    From Anger to Clarity: Transforming Frustrations into Effective Actions This past week offered many in our country a true opportunity for reflection. The atmosphere felt ripe with heightened emotions. Limiting my interactions in this atmosphere felt like a smart move. The temptation to blame anyone, everyone, someone for my internal sense of rumbling emotions felt overwhelming at times. And, so I slept. I meditated. I listened to music. Fuming internally is no fun. I actually woke in the middle of the night to the smell of burning embers. It took me a minute to realize it was my own emotional stew pot simmering on a low boil. Experience offered me the comfort of knowing that this too shall pass. We have all heard the expression anger begets anger. Which leads…