MSI Press Blog

  Today's meditation from  Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living   by Dr. Frederic Craigie: -47-   In the school of life, difficult people are the faculty. They teach us our most important spiritual lessons, the lessons that we would be most unlikely to learn on our own.   Mark I. Rosen   Civility has outer work and inner work. The outer work, if not easy, is at least straightforward. You listen to people. You give them a chance to speak. You communicate that you’re enough interested in understanding them that you’re willing to hold off on coming at them with your own opinions or rejoinders. You allow the possibility of a seedling relationship to grow. The inner work can be more challenging. How are you going to position your heart so that you are able to reach out in civility to someone who feels like the enemy? The outer work of civility takes place in the realm of behavior; the inner work takes place in...

Today's meditation from  Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living   by Dr. Frederic Craigie: -46-   Understanding and love are not two things, but just one. When you understand, you cannot help but love. You cannot get angry. To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living beings with the eyes of compassion. When you understand, you love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the suffering of people.   Thich Nhat Hanh   As a young African-American boy growing up in predominantly white Boston suburb, Daryl Davis knew little of racism. As he moved along into his middle school years, though, incidents began to come up that showed him the dark reality of racial discrimination even in his comfortable northern community. His experiences prompted a life-long question, “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” As an adult, Davis became a professional musician, performing boogie w...

  Inspiration doesn’t always arrive with fanfare. Sometimes it slips in quietly, disguised as a moment we almost missed. A cat’s stretch. A child’s breath. The way light lands on a chipped mug. Mindfulness is what lets us catch it. When I’m rushing, I miss the cues. The idea that flickered and vanished. The story that tried to form in the corner of my mind. But when I slow down—when I really inhabit the moment—I notice the strange, beautiful connections. A memory triggered by a scent. A metaphor hiding in a household chore. A solution tucked inside a sigh. Mindfulness isn’t passive. It’s a kind of listening that makes room for surprise. It’s what turns routine into revelation. What turns caregiving into poetry. What turns fatigue into a question worth answering. Inspiration doesn’t need perfect conditions. It needs presence. And presence is something I can practice, even on the messiest days. So today, I’m not waiting for a lightning bolt. I’m watching the clouds. I’m listeni...