By Celia Coates WINN appears now on the first and third Friday of each month, but there’s an extra Friday this November. Here’s a very small, “extra” WINN: “One of our major flaws, and causes of our unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of what is always around. We suffer because…
Category: Wisdom
Reflections on Spiritual Direction
By Lucretia B. Yaghjian There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or…
How To Live A Good Life
By Celia Coates There’s an ad on TV that plays some loud music and shouts out these words, “I want it all and I want it now!” while showing a large table loaded with plate after plate of take-out food. That attitude is a national problem: too many people think it is important to get it […]
Chris Wilson’s Master Plan
by Celia Coates “So they shackled me and locked me in solitary, no belt, no shoelaces, just white walls, a cot, and a food slot in a metal door. I stared at my little room. What else could I do? I thought, My life is over. I’m seventeen years old and I just got on…
Stacey Abrams: Learning, Leading, Teaching
By Celia Coates “When you decide what you want and why you want it, take action immediately. Do not wait for an invitation to act. I promise you, the letter is not in the mail.” This advice is from Stacey Abrams’ book, LEAD FROM THE OUTSIDE. It is not one of the self-positioning books written…
David Brooks’ SECOND MOUNTAIN
by Celia Coates A man who is searching for wisdom about being good gave me a printout of one of David Brooks’ opinion pieces that he’d found useful. Brooks had written about the “Five Lies Our Culture Tells” in THE NEW YORK TIMES and here’s his list: * “Career success is fulfilling. … if you make…
Update – The Great Invocation
Jack Stucki has let me know that the Energy Being appeared again later and suggested some changes beyond the ones found in the version of The Great Invocation that was published in WINN last week. (Please read that first if you haven’t already.) The other changes suggested by the Energy Being included using the word…
About The Great Invocation
By Celia Coates A prayer called The Great Invocation was given to Alice Ann Bailey in three different versions – one in 1935, one in 1940, and one in 1945 – by a spiritual teacher called The Tibetan. Each version was designed to meet the changing needs of the world at those times. The last version…
Dark Times and Brave Spirits
By Celia Coates There are more predictions about dark times than suggestions about what to do to get through them. Because I want to know more about what’s called for, I’ve begun collecting some ideas. Margaret Wheatley published a book in 2012 (a year approached with many, many predictions of doom) that includes some useful…
Many Grandmothers
By Celia Coates It’s been a while – in a 1997 magazine article Molly Giles asked, “Where are the old ladies now?” She described where they were when she was a child, “They used to be everywhere. One sat on every front porch, park bench and bus stop of the town where I grew up….
Two Gifts
By Celia Coates I’ve written before about “just the right wrong thing” – about times when something difficult or painful becomes a gift. Here’s another story about an event like that. A year or so ago a very dear friend told me about what had happened that day at work. She runs a program for…
What Have We Learned So Far ?
By Paul Jackson In the summer of 2017, I found myself spending time thinking about what I was supposed to be doing. I’ve always felt that we are here for a reason and that the measure of a life is how well we live our lives toward that purpose. In the past several years and…