Greetings Readers!
Here is the latest Monday Muse with a morning meditation, perennial reminder, question, and recommendation(s) to consider.
Be wise and be well this week!
📿 Morning Meditation
This week’s morning meditation is courtesy of The Wisdom School podcast (Apple or Spotify). Today’s meditation is a short selected reading (delivered in a Lectio Divina style) inspired by the Discourses of Epictetus.
📌 Perennial Reminder(s)
The basic issue, I think, is change. I hope I don't get to be the kind of old man who lives in nostalgia for the past. At my age, I have a lot of past to mull over, but my focus is on the present. It is basic to my prayer life and essential to contemplation. My daily meditation practice orients me to focus on the now where God is present, whether I feel that presence or not. In any case, eternity is totally present to the now. It is an all-inclusive now. As Emily Dickinson says: “Forever is composed of nows.”
Source: How to Be by Judith Valente and Brother Paul Quenon (Listen to the conversation)
💡 Perennial Question(s)
Where then is progress?
If any of you, withdrawing himself from externals, turns to his own will to exercise it and to improve it by labor, so as to make it conformable to nature, elevated, free, unrestrained, unimpeded, faithful, modest; and if he has learned that he who desires or avoids the things which are not in his power can neither be faithful nor free.
Source: Discourses by Epictetus
🔥 Recommendation(s)
This week’s recommendation is another Youtube video by After Skool. It’s based on a famous commencement speech (you may have already heard) by the late writer David Foster Wallace. The talk is delivered in a rather straightforward style and discusses several counterintuitive insights on the true value of things like attention and awareness. Let me know what you think in the comments!
🎧 Recent Podcast(s)
Thank you for reading/listening; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
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