The Empty Path | Page 2 of 15 | Nonaligned faith and practice in the present

“Yule Blood,” from Walhydra’s Porch (2008)

Tags Walhydra's Porch, Winter Solstice11/28/2018

Friends,

Here’s a blog post I wrote a decade ago about Yule.

To set the stage for this, you need to know that Walhydra is a writer’s alter-ego of mine, a grouchy old crone who is forever annoyed to have been reincarnated as a 60-something gay male would-be writer.

Yule blood

Sunday, December 28, 2008
First sliver of New Wolf Moon, after Winter Solstice

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Ignore the news cycle. Cooperation is hardwired.

Tags Antonio Damasio, cooperation, Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, joy11/04/20181 Comment

Mike Shell

There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys.
There’s only you and me and we just disagree. — Dave Mason

What is it we all fear? We fear what our culture—or, rather, whatever part of our culture we pay attention to—tells us to fear.

At the moment we are all afraid. All of us. On whatever part of the spectrum of belief we stand, there is nothing else in the pubic conversation right now except

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BTW, if you want an antidote to my “Jesus stuff”….

Tags Jesus, storytelling, Walhydra's Porch09/19/2018

Mike Shell

The name “Jesus” scares people off, since our sound bite- and meme-driven culture automatically ties that name with what I call the “Christianists,” those abusive people who misuse the sacred tradition of Jesus’ friends as a political ideology, the way Islamists do the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (“Peace be upon him”).

I’ll say more about this in a future post, but meanwhile….

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There is no secret

Tags parables, storytelling09/19/20182 Comments

Mike Shell

¹⁰Afterward, when he was alone, his followers and the Twelve asked him about his parables, ¹¹and he said, “To you the secret of the realm of God has been imparted; but to those who are outside everything takes the form of parables so that ¹²‘though they have eyes, they may see without perceiving; and though they have ears, they may hear without understanding; some day they might turn and be forgiven.'”

– Mark

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Rebooting The Empty Path

Tags faith, nonaligned, practice09/10/20183 Comments

Mike Shell

On May 27, 2007, I began publishing The Empty Path through the free blogging service of WordPress.com. I have now migrated that blog to a domain I own, EmptyPath.net.

The blog’s first post was called “Where to Start” and concluded with the following words:

The day-to-day reality of faith and practice, what

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“God loves those moments….”

Tags Joann Sfar, Judaism, Klezmer04/07/2017

Mike Shell

“I believe God loves those moments when we do without him. He thinks, ‘At last, they’re going to stop walking around with their nose up in the air awaiting some supernatural magic; they’re going to watch the snow and the trees and start to think a bit. They’re doing the job without me, inventing utopias that don’t have me as their essence; they are finding within themselves there reason for all things. In fact, without realizing it, they are understanding

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The Canaanite woman: Recognizing kinship

Tags Canaanite woman, Elaine Wainwright, historical Jesus, kinship03/31/20171 Comment

Mike Shell

Samaritans

In 2015, writing about “Christian Universalisms,” I explained that Jesus

was from Galilee in northern Palestine, child of Aramaic-speaking peasants, not of the “proper” Hebrew-speaking Jews from Judea in the south. His [initial] concern was that his own Galilean people not feel excluded from God’s blessing because of their not being part of the Jerusalem-centered Temple cult.

As we find in teaching stories like “the woman at the well” ( …

The alabaster jar

Tags maitri, mortality, the moment01/27/2017

Mike Shell

Many of us are chronically distressed by the suffering we see around us. It confronts us in the 24/7 news cycle, in social media, in what we pass on the street every day. We live with a longing to be rid of the pain and guilt that we experience in witnessing all of this suffering.

That longing drives us to cast about for things to do that would “fix the problem.” We try and we urge others to try political

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What should I do?

Tags compassion, maitri01/03/2017

Mike Shell

Originally published on Quaker Universalist Conversations (1/1/17).

I had a dream a few days ago, one of those rare wholly unambiguous dreams. It was a flying dream, but that’s not the relevant feature, just a plot device.

I was returning home to an upper floor of a six-story apartment building. Flying over the roof, I saw that the whole surface was filled with sleeping