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Zen and the Art of Longboarding
One of the best books I’ve ever read (without a doubt) is Eugen Herrigel’s Zen and the Art of Archery. The book is a short tale about the author’s time in Japan as he studied a special kind of Japanese archery under a Zen Master, who emphasised its spiritual aspect. For him, hitting the bullseye…
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Fully Human
The glory of God is a human being fully alive and to be alive consists in beholding God. Saint Irenaeus I am sometimes amazed at the lengths to which people will go in order to become “fully human” or “fully alive”. Gurus, saints, sinners, and seekers have all sought ways to attain this sort of…
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Laundry and Taxes
Like I said, it’s the gift that keeps on giving, so today I’m going to talk even more about what by this point I can safely call my favourite movie of all time: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. (I have already written about it twice, here and here.) In case my ramblings haven’t yet inspired…
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Loving Anger
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Revelation 3:16 In our culture, the feeling of anger has a bad reputation, and this is not entirely without reason. Anger, after all, often comes across as distasteful or rude. It is seen as unproductive, or…
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The Only Free Psychiatrist
Why do people pray? I don’t mean whether we should pray or whether prayer is effective, but why do people pray? What’s the logic? Prayer is something that sometimes doesn’t make sense in an immediate way. We often hear things like, “I’ll pray for you,” or, “I’ll pray for such and such a thing.” Maybe…
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Unorthodoxy
I’m a bit of a perfectionist. For those who know me, this might come as a surprise. I can imagine them asking, “How can you justifiably call yourself a perfectionist when your room looks like that?” It’s a fair point, well made, so perhaps I should be a little more specific. While I’m not the…
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The Banality of Evil
When I first learned who Hitler was (at a rather young age), I pictured him looking something like a cartoon villain. I imagined someone who looked disheveled and unkept, with violent facial features and crazy eyes. Maybe even with an evil moustache. (If you’ve seen Harry Potter, I imagined him looking something like Sirius Black…
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I Live in a Mansion
I live in a mansion. That’s what I tell people, anyway. Technically, it’s the truth. I do live in a mansion, but it’s not actually my mansion. To be completely honest, I have a room in a mansion, and I share the place with something like 24 other people. The mansion itself is actually a…
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Kids Ask Stupid Questions
What’s the stereotpical question that a child would ask? For me, when I think of kids asking questions, the first one that comes to mind is this: “Why is the sky blue?” Kids are stereotypically curious about the world and the way it works, sometimes to the point of annoyance. But that’s alright. Though we…
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I’m a Gambling Man
I owe perhaps more to one philosopher than any other: René Descartes. When I read his first two meditations on philosophy, I was an 18 year old freshly committed to getting his life on track after all of his antics from the high school years prior. I had no idea what I was going to…
El Filósofo
Think Deeply, Feel Fully