Author Archives: Patrick Cole

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About Patrick Cole

Husband, parent and writer. Sharing stories with a little humor and wisdom along the way.

From Fundamentalism to Atheism

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Blind faith? Faith can move mountains? Faith of our fathers? Author Richard Fast offers a critique on faith worth reading, I think.

“I’m NOT trying to sell Atheism … “God” forbid. I’m selling the concept of searching and finding your faith.”

Check out an excerpt from Richard Fast’s provocative article recently published in Backyard Church

I Finally Found Peace When I Accepted Atheism

The more I searched for answers outside myself, the more frustration and anxiety I felt.

I became an Atheist. I had found my answer.

I didn’t require a God or a particular faith to settle my tormented soul. With total peace of mind, I could accept that there doesn’t have to be a God. The universe could just be a beautiful mystery.

I didn’t have to invent or conjure anything to calm my soul. I didn’t have to force myself into mental contortions to follow someone else’s belief; I could happily accept that there are many questions to which I will never know the answers, and I’m okay with that.

Conclusion: True “faith” feels right.

If history has taught us anything, there’s very little we can honestly know. Finding faith is a uniquely human experience that makes the challenging road of life a little easier to travel.

But many years of searching, thinking, deep introspection, and an acceptance of Atheism (the unknowable) have finally given me peace of mind.

I’m NOT trying to sell Atheism … “God” forbid. I’m selling the concept of searching and finding your faith.

Whatever that may be, I sincerely hope that you find your faith, as I’ve finally found mine.

I am the author of The Challenge of Choice … how to make a “good” decision when it REALLY matters!

Excerpt from How to Free Yourself from the 7 Obsessions

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I hate to wait and that has been a life-long challenge for me. Below is an excerpt from a recent Lion’s Roar article that helps me better understand why.

Valerie Mason-John, M.A. is a public speaker and master trainer in the field of conflict transformation, leadership and mindfulness, the author of ten books and the Co-Founder of Eight Step Recovery, an alternative to the 12-step program for addiction.

http://www.valeriemason-john.com

How to Free Yourself from the 7 Obsessions

To free ourselves from habitual patterns, says Valerie Mason-John, we need to see how they have become part of our identity.

VALERIE MASON-JOHN 8 MAY 2024

Watch your thoughts; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become stories.
Watch your stories; they become excuses.
Watch your excuses; they become relapses.
Watch your relapses; they become dis-eases.
Watch your dis-eases; they become vicious cycles.
Watch your vicious cycles; they become your wheel of life.

Every time we habitually react, the past is present.

We transcend our habits by allowing a part of our superego to die.

For more from Valerie Mason-John check out these two websites:

http://www.lionsroar.com/how-to-free-yourself-from-the-7-obsessions/

http://www.valeriemason-john.com

A Heart-Centered Revolution

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Are you lovable? Do you have a perspective worth sharing? Is the world better off for you being here?

Today’s meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation includes a challenge from Jacqui Lewis to “really see.” See an excerpt below and read the full meditation on cac.org.

jacquilewis.com

A Heart-Centered Revolution Excerpt

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis writes of the solidarity necessary to transform our culture and our world: 

In order to live a moral life, a good life, an ubuntu life, we must commit to a life of love that means seeing all the things ..… 

Friend, you are the only one standing where you stand, seeing what you see, with your vantage point, your story. You are right there for a reason: to have, as my dear friend Ruby Sales says, “hindsight, insight, and foresight.” I want us to learn to see, with our eyes wide open, how best to be healers and transformers. I want us to really see, to fully awaken to the hot-mess times we are in and to the incredible power we have to love ourselves into wellness…. 

I want us open to revelation, not afraid of it, and open to the ways that it will provoke us to believe assiduously in how lovable we each are, and in the love between us and among us because, actually, believing is seeing. [2]  

[2] Jacqui Lewis, “Apocalypse Now: Love, Believing, and Seeing,” Oneing 10, no. 1, Unveiled (Spring 2022): 44–45. Available in print and PDF download. 

An Integrated Life

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Doctor (and Sister) Joan Chittister shares her weekly Vision and Viewpoint newsletter today with her comments below on the importance of “living an integrated life.” You can learn more about her and the Benedictine religious community in Erie, Pennsylvania at this website: joanchittister.org/~joanchit/

“Do not lie, even to yourself

Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Gandhi could have been a Benedictine. Humility is about living an integrated life, a life in which each part is in harmony with every other dimension.
 
The person who lives a lie, for instance, no matter how effective otherwise, is in tension every moment of the day.
 
The truth is that we are meant to be transparent.

Be what you say you are. Do not lie, even to yourself. Don’t live two lives

At the end, three things measure both our integrity and the harmony of our own lives: self-control, respect, and freedom from self-deception.

a process of slow and self-emptying transformation
 
enjoy the rest of the adventure called life, learning, becoming, growing as we go.

                  —from Radical Spirit (Random House), by Joan Chittister 

joanchittister.org/books-page/radical-spirit-12-ways-live-free-and-authentic-life

Finding Home in Ourselves

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“Don’t forget … to call yourself Home.” Kaitlin Curtice

This is a beautiful excerpt from the Center for Action and Contemplation about Kaitlin Curtice’s writing on the sacred legacy of home.

Check out both links identified below. You will be comforted and edified.

http://www.kaitlincurtice.com

Finding Home in Ourselves
 
Author Kaitlin Curtice writes about the sacred legacy of home:  

May we always return to the places where the stories begin, to challenge them, to accept and honor them, and to whisper to ourselves and one another that we are always, always arriving. 

Don’t forget, 
my love, 
to live. 

Don’t forget 
to love yourself, 
all of you, 
from every season 
and every place, 
because you never know 
when they will 
come knocking for 
a cup of coffee 
and an overdue hug. 

call yourself Home. 

Love Is Home

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“Felicia Murrell acknowledges that our first homes are not always safe …

How are you preparing a home of unconditional acceptance for yourself?“

Today’s Center for Action And Contemplation message offers a provocative post on where we can find our true home. Check out this beautifully written message by Felicia Murrell and her quotes from The Wizard of Oz written by L. Frank Baum.

“Home,” says Glinda the Good, “is a place we all must find, child. It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere.”

https://feliciamurrell.com/

Love is Home
 
Felicia Murrell acknowledges that our first homes are not always safe:  

For some, home is terror, a place to flee with no desire to return or revisit.

Often, when we think of home, we think only of an external place,

Love is home.  

Home is both an external dwelling and an internal abode. Home is the place where we belong, our place of acceptance and welcome. There, in this shame and judgment-free embryonic cocoon of love, we practice unconditional acceptance; we learn to relate to ourselves and the world around us.  

How are you preparing a home of unconditional acceptance for yourself?

“Home,” says Glinda the Good, “is a place we all must find, child. It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere.” [3] 

 [3] Joel Schumacher, The Wiz: Screenplay, adapted from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (New York: Studio Duplicating Service, 1977). 

Excerpts from The Departure and the Return

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Richard Rohr and the Center for Action and Contemplation offer another provocative post at their Daily Meditation site: cac.org/daily-meditations/the-departure-and-the-return/

Below are a few excerpts that especially interest me, and hopefully you as well.

“We are created with an inner drive and necessity that sends all of us looking for our True Self, our true home, whether we know it or not. This journey is a spiral and never a straight line. …  

We dare not try to fill our souls and minds with numbing addictions, diversionary tactics, or mindless distractions. (We are) found, precisely in the depths of everything, even and maybe especially in the deep fathoming of our fallings and failures. … 

If we go to the depths of anything, we’ll begin to knock upon something substantial, “real,” and with a timeless quality. We’ll move from the starter kit of “belief” to an actual inner knowing. This is most especially true if we have ever (1) loved deeply, (2) accompanied someone through the mystery of dying, or (3) stood in genuine life-changing awe before mystery, time, or beauty. …   

Like Odysseus, we leave from Ithaca and we come back to Ithaca, but now it is fully home because all is included and nothing wasted or hated: even the dark parts are used in our favor. … What else could homecoming be?  

Poet C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933) expressed this understanding most beautifully in his famous poem “Ithaca”:  

Ithaca has now given you the beautiful voyage.  
Without her, you would never have taken the road. 
With the great wisdom you have gained on your voyage,  
with so much of your own experience now,  
you must finally know what Ithaca really means. [1] “

References:  
[1] See C. P. Cavafy, “Ithaca,” in The Complete Poems of Cavafy, trans. Rae Dalven (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), 36–37. Paraphrased by Richard Rohr. 

An Unfaithful Nursery Rhyme

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Bob and Beth looked forward to death

ending their pain thereafter

Bob fell down and broke his crown

and Beth came tumbling after

Sisyphus fell into the abyss

carrying his shitbag upward

Sally Forth lost her True North

sought truth through tears and cuss words

Tiny Tim cycled on in

upon a trike of virtue

Trueheart Tess sorting through the mess

sought justice for Tim and her too

How many lives will be broken today?

How many ways can we repair the damage caused by an affair?

Dead Tree

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I feel like a dead tree

No branches, no bark

Missing my top half

Still standing but could probably be easily pushed over

Fortunately

Those who would be happy to topple me

Pull me up by my roots

Are no longer alive or

No longer capable

I’m not the last man standing

Nor the last tree standing

But I’m still standing

If only for today