The 60-Second Sabbath

Unity

  • Duality? Meh!

    Contraries no longer interest me. Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.   Continue reading

  • Letting Go

    Strive for nothingness, the point of complete surrender, of acknowledged helplessness, weakness, poverty, detachment. All ideas of self released. Paradoxically, ironically, in surrender we finally know freedom—from pretense, fruitless self-talk, dissatisfaction, fear, superiority, jealousy, anger. We enter peace, compassion, clarity,… Continue reading

  • Halloween: Hospitality

    "Trick of treat!" I remember cold Halloween nights when my siblings and I trick-or-treated back in my hometown in Michigan. With either my mother or my aunt following behind, we'd run door to door through our neighborhood and those beyond,… Continue reading

  • Drawing Lines

    When we draw lines to separate ourselves from those who are different, from those whom we don't understand, what we're really doing is protecting ourselves from our own weakness, fear and failure. But our weakness, fear and failure unite us… Continue reading

  • To See with the Eyes of the Divine

    In an often-quoted passage from the writings of Thomas Merton, he relates the following epiphany, experienced while standing on a street corner in Louisville, Kentucky: "I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they… Continue reading

  • Interpenetration

    Interbeing. Interpenetration. All things have their past in me. All things contributed to me. I do and shall contribute to all things. As Thick Nhat Hahn says, "This is not philosophy, this is reality." I recall reading somewhere (probably in… Continue reading

  • Falling Apart, Coming Back Together

    Disintegration leads to reintegration. Loss of the "I" (the ego, the self) leads to fuller integration into the greater "I" (which is ultimately union with all, with the divine, with God). This is the pattern of life, repeated daily, even… Continue reading

  • I Am

    The "I am" statements in the New Testament aren't just about Jesus, they're also about us. We're each intended to seek and embrace the "essential I," the I within. It's about each of us traveling our own unique path, the… Continue reading

  • You Are Them, They Are You

    Gays, Republicans, illegal immigrants, Jews, Muslims, Baptists, the mentally ill, the homeless…anyone you mistrust or dismiss or find foreign, strange or threatening, you are them and they are you, in a very real, absolute, spiritual sense. Whatever distinctions you've invented… Continue reading

  • If St. Paul Gets It, Why Don’t We?

    St. Paul got it: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 3:28). There is no longer… Continue reading