A Dip Into Eternity
What's wrong with knowing what you know now and not knowing what you don't know until later?-Winnie the Pooh |
Peaceful, Centered + Connected She would stay out there for hours. A bucket in hand, rubber boots on her feet, and friends from the neighborhood around her. When it rains a lot the water and dirt that pools between the trees on the side of our house transforms into a tadpole nursery. She'd scoop up the little amphibian babies and examine them. Some were little circles, still in their embryo form, while others had sprouted tails and showed the first sign of legs. Occasionally she'd slosh up to the front door and shout inside the house, "Mom, come see what we found!" I obliged. The whole world was in those moments. Deep time. But time moved forward. Frogs hopped away. She outgrew the rubber boots. Her legs have gotten much longer since then. And sometimes, she still returns. A salamander has made a home under a muddy log. Time gets lost all over again. A doorway to a kingdom opens. Eternity. December begins with a look at the final reflection in a series of offerings exploring aspects that emerged within the Western model of Christian spiritual understanding in conjunction with the model that is closer to what Jesus taught, and even if Jesus isn't your wisdom teacher of choice I believe you will find these perspectives are an echo of universal truths that resonate somewhere in the chambers of your heart. Perhaps they will invite you to pause and revisit how spiritual truths have been presented to you. A New Way to See the Good News A new way to see the Good News offers a short passage that may offer a fresh perspective or insight into the ancient collection of poems, letters, and stories known as the Bible. On one occassion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus, "Teacher, he asked, '"what must I do to inherit eternal life?". - Matthew 10:25 The question asked by the law expert in the parable of the Good Samaritan about eternal life is one that is often connected with life after death in modern day spiritual spaces. Judaism in Jesus’ day placed way less emphasis on the afterlife. What happens after you die was actually something there was little discussion about at all. Eternal life was about now. It was about life BEFORE death. It described a divine way of living now by living in peace & connection with God...in this moment. It was thought that discovering God’s kingdom now extended to the “world to come.” Until next time. Grace + Ease, Tia Join Me For A Virtual End of Year Practice |
Featured Blogs
News + New Good Things from Tia Norman
A contemplative space helping spiritual seekers live a more connected life.
News + New Good Things from Tia Norman The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words. It is beyond speech. It is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity, but we discover an old unity. My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be, is what we are. -Thomas Merton Peaceful, Centered + Connected When global confusion rises I...
News + New Good Things from Tia Norman "Sometimes silence is not an absence of sound but rather a presence of understanding." - Richard Wagamese Peaceful, Centered + Connected I listened to the eclipse as closely as I watched it. I made good on a promise to my daughter that April 8th would be our eclipse party day. She stayed home from school and was in charge of snacks. The spread included dragonfruit and pomegranate because both seem mysterious and require scientific research to slice and...
News + New Good Things from Tia Norman “When your needs are met, your soul sings.” -Oprah Winfrey Peaceful, Centered + Connected Somewhere along the way, I began denying my own needs and suffocating my voice to meet the limitations of others. This is the space where I am being stretched the most right now. What I am learning is that over time this moves one into an energy of depletion creating a center of desertion of our needs by refusing to recognize them out of fear. In the fear and...