by John Gray

Greetings to everybody.  Wherever we are, it’s here—and it is good to be here!

I’ll begin today with a biblical verse well known to many: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”  [Matthew. 5:8] Ever since these words were spoken by Jesus, remembered, and later translated from Aramaic to Greek to English and eventually memorialized in the Bible, how many millions of earnest people have wondered about what they mean and prayed to know how it’s done? I don’t know about you, but I don’t hear of many people walking around claiming they see God, the figurehead of religious belief.  The usual idea is that whoever, whatever God is, is unknowable until possibly after we’re dead.  To me this simply means there may be very few living people with pure hearts.

by John Gray

Today is the first Sunday of 2020.  May this be a year of clear vision.

Light seeds germinate in the heart and then are recognized by the mind. Aha! An idea, an inspiration is born. Many people like to take credit for their intuitive insights and good ideas, as though creativity originates in the human mind.  However, one of the brighter minds of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, is said to have said, “When the solution is simple God is answering.” That may have been his way of acknowledging that something transcendent is at work in the process of creativity; I don’t know, and Albert isn’t around to ask. We’ll have to ask ourselves. 

by John Gray

There is a great amount of revered poetry in the literature of human cultures and languages the world around. Poetry is defined in my dictionary as “writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm.” That definition is longer than some poems!  I think of a poem as imagery and meaning expressed through spare, carefully chosen words which touch the heart. I admire the work of anyone, past or present, skilled in this language art. We might think, for examples, of famed poets such as Shakespeare and Rumi, Homer and Milton, Poe, Walt Whitman, Lao Tzu, Maya Angelou, Robert Frost, and Pablo Neruda, and their profound, insightful, and lasting inspirational works. To me, however, nothing new or old surpasses the poetry found in the King James Version of the Bible.

by John Gray

We’ve all had many teachers in our lives. There were the professional teachers in our formal school years, and many, many more people who may not have been teachers per se, but from whom we’ve learned many things. And of course, we are taught a great deal through our own observations and experiences in life and from books and other media.