The first thing I do at the start of a new year is to clear off my desk—not just to find places for all the physical odds and ends that have accumulated, but to organize my ideas, sorting through the various notebooks and scraps of paper where I’ve jotted down thoughts that came to me on the fly.
Ever since writing my book about joy, Champagne for the Soul, I’ve continued to collect quotes on the subject of joy. A while back I published a set of these quotes as a blog post. Now here’s a second installment:
The wishes of a dying man are not to be taken lightly. So when my friend Mark, lying in his bed at Hospice, asked me to write something about him and his son Geoff, I gladly agreed.
In Buddhist tradition, Gautama once preached what is known as the “Flower Sermon,” which consisted of simply holding up a single flower and saying not one word. Through this silent, direct pointing to reality, one of his disciples instantly attained enlightenment. It was this disciple who went on to bring Buddhism to China and so became the first patriarch of Zen.
If you’re a fan of Star Trek, have you ever wondered where Spock got the idea for his famous Vulcan salute, accompanied by the phrase, “Live long and prosper”? Like everything else important in life, it’s from the Bible. Here’s the story.
Nearly twenty years have passed since I completed the experiment in joy that changed my life, which I wrote about in my book Champagne for the Soul. Sometimes I’m asked whether the joy I discovered back in 1999 really has continued, every day, down to this present day. The answer is yes, and I want to say something about how this works in practice.
My daughter Heather is a blogger. For several years I’ve noticed what a fine writer she is, but now she’s really hit her stride and found her voice. It’s a deep voice, deeply thought and felt, and she expresses herself beautifully and in surprising ways.
In the wake of the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks on churches in Sri Lanka, my thoughts turned to the grim reality of Christian martyrdom in modern times.
I’ve always wondered about John’s use of the word Logos in the first verse of his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” What exactly does this mean? Of all the terms John could have used to refer to Jesus Christ, why call Him Logos?
When Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden, the Lord installed cherubim and a flaming sword to guard the entrance, and He also “made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (Gen 3:21). That these two events coincided is not coincidental.