The title of the book Unbornness refers to the state of the soul’s being before birth, as it prepares to be born in its little human form. The book by Peter Selg refutes the image of the giant gumball machine where you turn the handle and a new soul pops out. Instead, he says, it is a very intentional (and often difficult) process that is anything but random.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with programs that propose to promote understanding between identity groups by “breaking barriers,” “building coalitions,” or “finding common ground.” I like the goal, and I’ve gotten to know some great people through these activities, but I’ve always felt more restless than truly changed by them. That said, I like this simple statement about the need to connect with those we see as different from us.

Can we consider the three major religions of the Middle East—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—each as an expression of a necessary step in “reconnecting” with the spirit? And can we judge the rightness of these steps without the wisdom of the feminine principle? In this section from How Wide the Heart, Marko Pogacnik poses these questions while traveling in the Holy Lands and seeking solutions to the ancient conflicts there.

Religious teachings give us knowledge and guidance, but also the freedom to stray from or misinterpret their laws. Through our feminine nature, the part of our wisdom we cannot separate from because we live within it, we can find a necessary balance.

I was yanked by the hair by this passage from The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. It’s hard to read without the uneasy feeling that Lewis looked down his nose at the working classes and the uneducated, but grappling with that feeling is part of the joy of reading and marveling at it. Above all he is calling for us to become individuals, just as Sardello does, and to allow the same in others.

I think this has great implications for our politics as well as for our spirituality. It makes me sad that so much of what Lewis suggested could happen is happening today, when, as Yeats wrote, the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity. At the same time, to see the situation summed up so well by such a masterful devil as Screwtape is a treat. I’ve abridged this while reading, so please find the book and read “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” through for yourself.

Dipping back into Love and the Soul by Robert Sardello. This reading has many things, including bone-chewing by the dogs and me doing my best Michael Toms voice (stuffy and nasal). If you can get past those features, you’ll hear about individuality—a sense of the I; how a sense of purpose can well up from within; the heart as an organ of perception; and a bit of Strange Boat by The Waterboys. All this for free!

Here are some excerpts from an astronomical calendar for 2011, written by Brian Keats. (His web site is www.astro-calendar.com.)

While these passages mostly relate to the Moon, I particularly like the part where he asks us if we can develop a feeling, not just a thought, for the Earth as a living being. I believe we will only “save the Earth” when we relate to her as a living being and part of us. Without that feeling, we are only acting out of an abstract principle, and that has no real power to move us.

Gratitude – positivity – trust in the world – cultivating these qualities helps bring about forces that teach us about our own destinies. These are forces that can also be healthy for our teaching, our politics, and who knows what else. The reading is from a small and readable book, Coping with Karma by Joop van Dam

(Music from the magnificent piece Thunderhead by Dalglish & Larson).

This passage seems appropriate for the beginning of autumn. It’s from David S. Mitchell’s essay “Evil: Our Dance Partner through Life,” which appears in the compilation The Inner Life of the Earth. It’s a look at the condition of being human, which includes the chaos of living divided between our worldly and spiritual natures, and the necessity of what we call “evil” for the development of the world.

Here is a mind-expander that makes a good example of that “both/and” thinking that I like. In this passage from The Changing Countenance of Cosmology, author Willi Sucher compares a Sun-centered (Copernican) view of the cosmos and an Earth-centered view. Of course, in terms of pure astronomy we know that the Earth and other planets orbit around the Sun; but in terms of astrosophy the Earth plays a central role as the place where material development is most fully realized by the spiritual beings.

So…using all the advances that math and physics have given us in understanding the workings of the planets…we now have to direct our thought to the spiritual workings of our existence…become more Earth-centered in our thinking, so to speak.

Back to reading again after a spring-induced absence. It takes a rainy weekend to get me and my attention back inside!

Here is part of a lecture by Rudolf Steiner on the mission of our world.