It’s a sunny morning in Juneau, Alaska, and my motorcycle is parked just outside of my favorite coffee shop in town, The Rookery Cafe. Excited voices of my contemporaries fill the air around me, but I am lost in a heartening reverie. I am reconnecting with an old friend, Yoshida Kenko, a soulmate of sorts. …
I love this observation by C.S. Lewis: “The whole man is kindled by the shape of his virtues.” In a world where people are judged by their success and not dignity, fear and anxiety are bound to prevail. Wherever the mindset reigns that a man who succeeds is right, suffering shall no longer be a …
[43] Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.[44] But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;[45] That ye may be the children …
I recall watching King Charles III’s coronation last year at about this time and thinking how starkly that event contrasted with the majority of the ceremonial events held at around the same time on earth. I remember thinking that this impressive display of pomp and circumstance on display used to seem appropriate and expected, but …
Tonight I am filled with questions, the answers to which would undoubtedly drastically change the course of my life, if not the course of all of humanity. These are not new questions, in fact they have been asked and generally unanswered for thousands of years. What if this planet was not ours to dissect and …
1. How much pain have cost you imagined evils which never came to be? It is always torturous to extrapolate from a faith in lack and the presumption of failure. 2. Never mourn the living. Savor the present forms through which the light of eternal life surges. 3. Beneath the tormented man darts a light-hearted …
At Grass by Philip LarkinThe eye can hardly pick them outFrom the cold shade they shelter in,Till wind distresses tail and mane;Then one crops grass, and moves about- The other seeming to look on -And stands anonymous againYet fifteen years ago, perhapsTwo dozen distances sufficedTo fable them: faint afternoonsOf Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,Whereby their …
The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago The old adage—“What has your heart, has you”—rings as true today as it did in the beginning…of this moment, of your life, and of time. …
I was reading through the quarterly Boston College publication, "C21 Resources," from my grad school alma mater, and I appreciated the various perspectives on the trap of polarization that has shackled much of the body of humanity these days. The guest editor, Brian Robinette, summarized the turbulent societal malaise well in his opening article: It …
The Great Promise is there for you. You did not overcome the enormous odds stacked up against you－at conception, during the first nine months of your life on earth in the darkness of your mother's womb, or during a childhood while being raised by imperfect adults－to live a life of tedious mediocrity. You are here to be a blessing: an impactful, meaningful, purposeful, colorful thread in the tapestry of life.
Gregory Hake 