 By Jim Selman | Bio
Read the rest of the 12-Step Program > Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3We’ve been drawing an
analogy between the state of affairs in the governance of our country
and the various kinds of addictive conditions we face as individuals.
Specifically, we’ve been saying the ‘system’ is broken, we’re out of
control and we need to find something larger than the political gridlock
driven by special and self-interest groups we’re witnessing in
Washington. In watching the final hours of the
healthcare debate, I was heartened when
[ Read More]
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By Stuart J. Whitley | Bio
Einstein is supposed to have said that the
most important decision we ever make is whether the world is a good
place or a bad place. I don’t believe that we consciously make that
decision—we are taught to believe it, one way or the other, and the
most difficult lesson of all to unlearn is that we live in a hostile
universe. There are just too many confirmatory events that tend to
erode our courage to think differently. Current strategies in[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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By Jim Selman | Bio
Julia Baird has a nice piece in the September 25th issue of Newsweek called “ Positively Downbeat”.
She’s commenting on Americans’ obsession with being happy and the
billions we spend to learn “the secret”. It’s all about quick and easy
fixes for life’s dilemmas and the not-so-small industry of consultants,
motivational speakers and authors that are standing in the wings to
offer answers and potions. She rightly points to the grand daddy of all
self-help offerings, “ The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale and its latest incarnation “ The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne as archetypical examples of this genre.[ Read More]
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
I
was listening to a lecture today on the philosopher Martin Heidegger.
He is pretty difficult to understand at the best of times, even though
I have been a student of his thinking for many years. The lecture today
spoke of the distinction he made between ‘tradition’, which he felt was
a bad thing, and ‘heritage’, which he thought was a good thing. In
fact, he felt heritage was essential to understanding the true nature
of ‘Being’. I won’t pretend to grasp it all fully, but what I did get was that[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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 By Shae Hadden | Bio
I
was in an interesting conversation recently about how we can interact
with people who hold different beliefs than ours. The question posed
was, “How can one be with someone whose beliefs are the antithesis of
our own?” An important inquiry to engage in, considering that a clash
of beliefs is at the heart of most conflict and strife between people. Responses from the group varied from escape[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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The Pope's Love in Truth, his third letter to the bishops of the world, is written in the context of the current global economic crisis. The
Pope views the current crisis as an opportunity for us to discern and
to create a new vision for our future. In his latest encyclical, he
doesn't focus on specific systems of economics or reconstructing the
global economy. Instead, he reminds us that our markets are shaped by
our culture, and that it is up to us to focus on the common good and
reconstruct our societies and cultures based on 'love of truth', rather
than 'crude materialism'.
"Economy and finance . . . can be used badly when those at the helm are
motivated by purely selfish ends. Instruments that are good in
themselves can thereby be transformed into harmful ones. But it is
man's darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the
instrument per se. Therefore it is not the instrument that
must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and
their personal and social responsibility."
Read the encyclical here. Read Father Sirico's opinion here.
[ Read More]
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I was in a discussion yesterday with a bunch of guys and we got onto
the topic of emotional maturity. A bunch of middle-aged guys talking
about emotional maturity is kind of like a bunch of ladies discussing
jock straps—there is a probability that we don’t know what we’re
talking about. Nonetheless, it was a great conversation because we all
in different ways acknowledged that this area is a seriously neglected
aspect of our development. It isn’t that we aren’t aware of our emotions, but we aren’t always
very literate in how to manage them and, given the culture’s bias
toward ‘strong’ manly images, we’ve ended up more confused than mature.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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By Shae Hadden | Bio
One of my New Year traditions is to clean up some of the papers that
have accumulated around me over the past year. Yesterday, I came across
these “Facts of Life” that someone had given me and thought they were
worth sharing. Unlike the ‘facts of life’ we normally think about (like
‘the birds and the bees’, death and taxes), these seem fitting for the
beginning of a new year, especially since they actually challenge us to
look at ourselves and others in a whole new way.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
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 Memory is an interesting and strange phenomenon. I think (as most of us
do) that what I remember is more or less what happened. This came home
to me a number of years ago when I was dating a woman I had dated
twenty years previously and whom I had not seen in the intervening
period. We ‘connected’ like old friends and more or less fell into the
kind of comfortable conversation that old friends do. As we began to
recall our earlier relationship (which was pretty intense and lasted
for more than a year), our stories diverged immensely. I have always prided myself on my memory. Other than occasional
journaling and this blog, I have not spent a lot of time writing down
my thoughts or experiences. Now I wish I had kept a diary just for the
interest value it might have when comparing the written record with my
recollections.[ Read More]
Written by Shae Hadden at Personal Empowerment
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 By Stu WhitleyBioThis is the third post in a four-part series.
What may be demonstrated as a biological truth is intuitively
understood as we grow older. We become less egocentric, more aware that
the world has many centres of the universe besides our own, and that in
some mysterious way, these centres are all linked. In the mature adult,
we recognize as poets have before us, that we are round people on a
round earth, cognizant of being interwoven in a circular web of
connection with all human beings, which is among other things to
understand interdependency, forgiveness and the nature of healing. Hugo
wrote: “We are never done with conscience. Choose your course by it…it
is bottomless, being God.” And what is conscience if not memory?
Memory, that is, linked to consequences. No one can divine the future
with any exactitude. Yet we are capable of discerning the truths that
help guide us to it; I believe that those truths are at least in part
found in our collective memory.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
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