Friday, July 25, 2008

The search for meaning

"Morning"

At the end of Session 5 of the Foundations class I teach at St. John's Center, I always say, "Next week, we're going to learn 'the meaning of life'." Everybody laughs because those words have become such a cliché. But, in fact, the reason they are a cliché is because the search for meaning is so universal and the feeling of meaninglessness is so painful:

What we are looking for on earth and in earth and in our lives is the process that can unlock for us the mystery of meaningfulness in our daily lives. It has been the best-kept secret down through the ages because it is so simple. Truly, the last place it would ever occur to most of us to find the sacred would be in the commonplace of our everyday lives and all about us in nature and in simple things.

Alice O. Howell in The Dove in the Stone

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