Beauty: The Invis­i­ble Embrace, John O’Donohue, Harper Perennial, 2005

Beauty does not linger, it only vis­its.
Yet beauty’s vis­i­ta­tion affects us and invites us into its rhythm,
it calls us to feel, think, and act beau­ti­fully in the world:
to cre­ate and live a life that awak­ens the Beautiful.

Beauty is a gen­tle but urgent call to awaken. Best­selling author John O’Donohue […]

I’m read­ing a very inter­est­ing book, From Where You Dream: The Process of Writ­ing Fic­tion, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Robert Olen But­ler. It seems the process of writ­ing lit­er­ary fic­tion is quite sim­i­lar to the process of nat­ural devo­tion in which we enter into a lov­ing rela­tion­ship with Radha-Krishna. They both involve a daily entrance […]

I used to be quite an ecsta­tic dancer in kir­tan, but now I don’t do that. I think it’s a cul­tural prac­tice that just isn’t part of the cul­ture I live in. Now kir­tan is my wife and I chant­ing sit­ting before our home altar.
Just as the Orissa devo­tees moved from loud kir­tans to more personal, […]

Thus, we arrive at a point where the high­est human con­cep­tion of God-dess and the high­est ser­vice one can ren­der them is for them to be a lov­ing young cou­ple, with us as their friends and lovers, totally unaware of their divin­ity. Deep, intense love remains the key element.

The asso­ciates please God-dess accord­ing to their par­tic­u­lar rela­tion­ship, like ser­vant, friend, par­ent, or lover. This rela­tion­ship does not derive from birth or an exter­nal cer­e­mony like adop­tion or mar­riage, but it derives from the spe­cific emo­tion or devo­tional love an asso­ciate man­i­fests. Nat­ural devo­tional prac­tice includes cul­ti­vat­ing an emo­tional, lov­ing rela­tion­ship with God-dess.
God-dess is […]