Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.    Matthew 5:7 In a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, called “The White Snake,” a man acquires the ability to understand the speech of animals. In this, he...

From a Taoist perspective, harmonizing with the deepest spiritual impulses leads to good fortune. This happens when a person seeks to be their truest self rather than conforming with others for ego-based reasons. One complexity in the “how-to” is dealing...

In the Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass K-T Extinction, the death of dominant land dinosaurs made-way for smaller animals to flourish. (Scoville, 2019). Duck-billed platypuses, green sea turtles, cockroaches, lobsters, sea stars, horseshoe crabs, and others. These inherited the Earth. (Blue Planet Aquarium,...

The second Beatitude is a powerful feminine weapon in Taoist warfare against the bitterness that can accumulate with time. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Matthew 5:4. No one who’s truly alive escapes major loss. As...

For Taoist instructions on spiritual warfare, look at Matthew 5:3-12 in the Christian Bible. Taken superficially, the Beatitudes look like affirmations for polite society. But Jesus didn’t seem concerned with social etiquette nor preventing hurt feelings. The teachings sound more...

As a college student majoring in English, I loved reading Wordsworth. I still relate to his process of walking in nature and listening as part of the writing process. The poem featured in this post came to me that way....

Under my pillow and facing upward on the bed a 3x5 inch plastic box brought the always-manifesting radio of sublime reality from the ethers into my rebellious 13-year-old ear. The King Biscuit Flour Hour and Roger Daltrey’s insistence, “See me,...

While supernovas explode in space, I live on Earth in a body made of stardust. While I can't fathom creation, the Creator still speaks to me in my dreams. The poem that follows, The Nature of Our Relationship, centers on...

I dreamed long ago of a tiger wearing a dhoti (a white cloth wrapped around her pelvis), sitting in a cage of iron bars, with her body twisted completely in knots, legs forward and up, ankles behind head, sitting still...