When I think of curiosity, the first images that come to my mind are kittens and puppies poking their little button noses into absolutely everything, and my four-year-old grandson constantly asking “why?” For both the pups and kittens, and Roland, nothing is off limits to be sniffed, tasted or asked about. That’s how young beings explore their world. It’s all available in its newness. On the other hand, curiosity can carry a less-appealing connotation, as in the phrase, “idle curiosity.” It gets equated with nosiness. As a noun, it is sometimes used to mean something peculiar or odd, and one might stare closely at a peculiar bug just because it is strange. A more pernicious version of this is when someone stares at a person who appears “different” or acts differently from the cultural norm. When some of his followers asked the Buddha about what would happen after death, his response was something like “I haven’t addressed those questions because they aren’t conducive to enlightenment.” So much for their curiosity! Some contemporary Buddhist teachers, however, have approached curiosity differently. Christina Wolfe and Greg Serpa take Jon Kabat Zinn’s Seven Attitudes of Mindfulness (acceptance, nonjudging, nonstriving, letting go, patience, humor, trust, and beginner’s mind) and add to them curiosity, kindness, gratitude and generosity. Wolfe and Serpa write, “A popular meditation instruction invites us to check in with our own experience as if we were checking in with a good friend. When you meet a friend you haven’t seen in a while, you’re naturally full of curiosity about

Oftentimes, we tend to assume that wholeness is a good thing. It seems pretty intuitive that wholeness should be something we strive for, and that it’s better than whatever alternatives we might propose. Fragmentation? Brokenness? But wait—let’s ask a Buddhist what they can contribute to this discussion. The Four Noble Truths that are often used to summarize the Buddha’s teachings leave much unexplained, but nonetheless are a good starting point for our investigation. The First Noble Truth simply points out that suffering exists. Life is dukkha, suffering. Buddhists aren’t pessimists—far from it. But Buddhists are realists. If we are alive, sooner or later, we will come across the truth of suffering. The second truth identifies the cause of our suffering as tanha, or desire. The word, however, connotes a specific kind of desire, the desire for private fulfillment. It consists, as Huston Smith puts it so well, “not of all inclinations, but of those that pull against life and a whole.” Suffering occurs when we seek our own fulfillment without regard for the whole. Traditionally, Buddhists have identified three such desires: craving pleasure, material goods, and immortality, all of which by their very nature cannot be satisfied. Most UUs, I think, don’t fall into those three traps, at least not in their more blatant forms. We may, however, as do a lot of people, crave something we identify as “wholeness.” The third truth draws the logical conclusion from the first two: to end, or at least limit suffering, not only for ourselves but for

There are certain books and ideas I return to time and time again because they have proven to be reliable guides and trusted advisors in my own life. I also recommend them to others for the same reason. One of these is Joseph Campbell’s epic work on the heroic journey, Hero with a Thousand Faces. The journey is a “monomyth,” a myth that recurs throughout many times and in many cultures. Campbell unpacks the mythic narrative in seventeen detailed steps. In sum, though, we can understand the hero’s journey in three parts: departure, initiation, and return. The hero begins their journey in the world that is familiar to them, the world that they know. A call to adventure intervenes in this familiar world, beckoning them on to…what? The adventurer does not know at this point. Many narratives depict this in mythic terms. However, we can also understand it in more contemporary terms, relating it to the various personal journeys of our lives, both actual travel and inner journeys of self-discovery. We can apply it as well to congregational evolution. The center part of the heroic journey takes place in the unfamiliar world into which our adventurer has been thrust, either by choice or by circumstance. Various challenges await the hero here. Travelers through this strange landscape face challenges, some great and some small. They encounter helpers along the way. There is always what Campbell calls the “supreme ordeal.” This comes in a few standard forms, but “intrinsically, [it] is an expansion of

Some of you have probably heard me tell this story before. When I was in grad school, I needed a desk that was large enough to accommodate my way of working, which usually entailed spreading a lot of resources out on a surface, having a good spot for my shiny new electric typewriter (!), all the while leaving room for a coffee cup. A small desk just wouldn’t work. Enter the typical grad student problem—I didn’t have the money for the type of desk I needed and wanted. A weekend spent touring thrift shops in Nashville turned up a huge old desk, one with a large work surface and an array of good drawers for storage. It was oak, even, solid and not veneer. Some of the drawers creaked, but no real problem. The thoroughly dinged-up top of the desk was a larger problem. In an era when we still frequently wrote with paper and pen, the potholes in the desktop got in the way.  I solved the problem by having a sheet of heavy acrylic cut to fit the desktop, making a smooth surface for writing. Over the years, I slipped more and more quotes underneath the clear top of the desk. I still collect quotes, although now I store them electronically. Here are a few, with commentary, that are in my mind as the new year opens. “Beware of destination addiction, a preoccupation with the idea that happiness is the next place, the next job, and with the next partner. Until