ORDINARY LIFE - Thoughts and Ideas to Help You Live a Happier Life

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Summary for June 19, 2016

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Dear Folks -

I want, first of all, to alert those of you in the Houston area to the fact that there is going to be an outstanding Choral Evensong this Sunday at St. Paul’s. (Actually, there is a lot of outstanding music activity this week.) Here is full information.

The St. Paul’s Choir will sing Evensong accompanied by organ and orchestra.

Music will include Charles Villiers Stanford’s Magnificat and Nunc dimittis in A, and William Walton’s Te Deum and Spitfire Prelude. The choir will also sing the Preces and Responses of David Ashley White which were originally commissioned for St. Paul’s Choir’s residency at Westminster Abbey in 1989.

There are three opportunities to attend this service and all are open to the public:

Thursday, June 23, at 1:30 p.m. OR 3:40 p.m. (as part of the American Guild of Organist National Convention)

Sunday, June 26, at 4:00 p.m.

For more details click here

I’m sharing this with you because this will be the last performances of the choir prior to their being on tour being the choir in residence for a week at St. Mary’s cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland. I will be accompanying the choir on this trip and then have an extended time visiting “sacred spaces in Scotland.” I will be posting writings and pictures about this adventure on the Ordinary Life website.

This week in Ordinary Life I used the text in the Gospel of Thomas we are up to in our going through this document as an excellent opportunity to offer my own reflections on the anger, fear and violence in our culture - especially as these have shown up in the Orlando shooting and the various responses made to it. Though the talk focuses on two of the most troublesome, for some, topics brought up in our times together - the moral obligation to be happy and the meaning of “non-dual mind” - what the talk is really about is our need as a culture to grow up. I called the talk -

“Learning to Tie Our Spiritual Shoelaces"

That is the gist of the talk offered in Ordinary Life this week. The audio version is different than the written text. You’ll find the text of the talk, the presentation slides and audio version using the links below.