MSI Press Blog

  Today's meditation from  Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living   by Dr. Frederic Craigie. -11-   You get this one life… If you do not have your deepest desires in sight-- and it’s interesting that the word “desire” comes from the Old Latin, meaning “of the stars--” if you do not keep your star in sight, you’re in danger of losing everything that is precious to you, and living out a life that is like a shell.   David Whyte   Remembering who you are is not an idle or academic exercise. You get this one life. Your desires are  of the stars.  Embracing who you are has a sense of urgency, of eternality. What do you do that is  of the stars?  What choices do you make that align with the desires, the values, and the passions that are sacred for you? Certainly, visioning is a part of the process. If your life is about compassion, you look for places where you can embody kindness and generosity. If your l...

  Today's meditation from  Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living   by Dr. Frederic Craigie. -5-   Don’t ask what the world needs; ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.   -         Howard Thurman   Several years ago, I was in Chicago for a professional conference. Life-long baseball player, fan, and addict that I am, I never pass up an opportunity to see a major league game on the road. I took the Red Line to the Sox-35 th  Avenue stop for U. S. Cellular Field (where the White Sox play; it will always be “Comisky Park” to me) and got off with the crowd. On the platform was a small, thin, elderly man with Chinese features, playing a two-stringed fiddle (which I later learned is called an erhu) with the accompaniment of a small CD player. The music had a beat to it and was really moving along. His eyes were closed, ...

Today's meditation from  Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living   by Dr. Frederic Craigie. -4-   Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.   Helen Keller   The story of the man being kind to his challenged wife introduces a vital element in the idea of miracles. Thinking of miracles as “objects of wonder,” calling forth “awe and admiration,” making you smile… does not presume a rosy and gleeful understanding of life. To the contrary. Life entails suffering, and it is perhaps in the setting of suffering that the ability to pause and behold at least the shadow of the miracle can be most life-giving. As we move toward the end of the second decade of this century, the cohort of women and men who survived the Holocaust is dwindling, but their powerful stories remain. Edith Herz was born in 1926 to a comfortable Jewish family in Germany. They lived in Worms, which had been a center of Jewis...