I think it’s time to draw the bedside curtain around the drama of my suffering. “Life is suffering,” and like the drama of a child trapped in a well, it can be mesmerizing, but beyond a certain small circle of those involved, it’s really a distraction. At some point I just need to do the work of opening myself to self-transformation, rather than talking about it. I think I have sketched out my assignment pretty well, to myself and my friends.
And I have a good framework in which to work: I’ll be taking John’s meditation class “Taking Jesus Seriously,” starting September 24th, and running into December. I’ll be taking Tom’s workshop, “Spiritual Practice with John Woolman,” for the five Tuesdays in October, and my (mostly-non-Quaker) book group will be reading John Shelby Spong’s “Jesus for the Non-Religious.”

So, turning my attention to other matters, the book that my book group is currently reading brings quantum physics and psychology together, in an attempt to extricate us from the mental trap of our own making. The author, Amit Gotswami, starts with one of the most basic challenges to our current assumptions: “Atoms are not little things.”