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Chattering Mind

Silly me, I always thought singer Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam ) had written the melody behind “Morning Has Broken,” a hit in 1970. The song is, in fact, an old Gaelic Christmas hymn called “Christ in the Manger.” You’ll find the song’s history piecemeal in posts here at Songfacts.com.

Wow! I have met my first shaman, and what a wonderfully nurturing woman she is. Her name is Donna Henes, but she is known to many as Mama Donna. She has written several books, the most recent of which is “The Queen of My Self: Stepping into Sovereignty in Midlife.” Mama Donna decided to encourage…

Can NPR’s Terry Gross get any better at extracting delicate spiritual insights from the folks she so skillfully has on her program? I love her. I listen to her show “Fresh Air” in the car when I’m on my way to pick up the young Chatterings. And the religious topics she’s tackling are so, well,…

Last night the Chatterings held a family meeting at the dining room table. We took turns holding a “talking stick,” which initially was a lit candlestick ringed with tiny Christmas ornaments. Later, when the candlestick proved too distracting and delicate, we switched to holding a long paintbrush. I am an Aries and always the first…

So you didn’t put your garden to bed. So what? The trees and shrubbs have already forgiven you. Plus, Home and Garden’s website says that in most parts of the country, it’s not too late to mulch. In fact, if you’d mulched your garden earlier, vermin of all sorts might have set up camp by…

This morning, I sat down and watched this enlightening four-way conversation on contemplative practice and meditation that was taped last month at Washington’s National Cathedral. In it, NPR’s religion producer Lynn Neary leads psychologist and “Emotional Intelligence” author Daniel Goleman, medical professor and “Wherever You Go, There You Are” author Jon Kabat-Zinn, and centering-prayer creator…

There truly is something for everyone on the World Wide Web. Here’s the Christmas carol page of a website devoted to sheet music and guidance for the diatonic harmonica player. I never got past “Oh Susannah!” myself.

On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI lambasted “today’s consumer society,” which is “unfortunately subjected to a sort of commercial ‘pollution’ that is in danger of altering” the true spirit of Christmas. He suggests that Christian families, in lieu of spending their savings at Toys “R” Us next week (I’m paraphrasing there), take part in activities that…

It debases the divine to place it in abstract heights, in some cloud-cukoo-land. We will never live in spiritual realities if we conceive the spiritual only in the abstract, if we cannot bring it into connection with the whole course of the world and its manifestations as we find it in sensory reality.–Rudolf Steiner in…

Last night, as I was readying myself for bed (I was, in fact, seated on the side of the bathtub, filling a hot water bottle), I thought to my chattering self: “Something’s different. What is it?” It seemed we were not alone in the house. Was there a houseguest sleeping on the couch downstairs? No.…
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