Amidst the daz­zling exha­la­tion of explod­ing super­novae and the pas­sion­ate in-breath of black holes, galax­ies whirl wildly while God, vastly smil­ing, spins on one cen­tripetal toe at the cen­ter of all, shout­ing, “WTF is going on?!” I pro­claim the igno­rance of God. This procla­ma­tion of God’s igno­rance is an act of faith. I am  com­forted by the propo­si­tion that the uni­verse is out of con­trol. God sim­ply watches the ran­dom glory of spon­ta­neous evo­lu­tion in per­pet­ual won­der, with no idea where it comes from or where it’s going. No God whom I could pos­si­bly wor­ship is in the con­trol busi­ness. I do not live in a robot uni­verse. As God’s great­est gift to me is the gift of free will, so God’s great­est gift to nature is chaos, the frac­tal poetry of chance, the ran­dom beauty of evo­lu­tion­ary self-design. The notion that Bib­li­cal prophets pre­dicted the future is a com­mon mis­un­der­stand­ing. The Hebrew word naviʾ, a loan word from the Akka­dian nabū, orig­i­nally meant to call, to sum­mon, not to pre­dict. The Hebrew prophet saw where present trends might take their peo­ple, and called them to ethical/spiritual trans­for­ma­tion now. The prophet’s call was not a time-line, but a cry for the turn­ing Read the Rest…

Writ­ing From the Heart & Soul: a work­shop in Spir­i­tual Writing

Love bent down to lis­ten to what was in your heart, and found only good there —that you wished to impart.   Love then became a rain­bow that bridged the infi­nite sky, to bring to oth­ers all that it had heard, so that joy could impart and share its voice along with all the other rain­bow songs —that are born of the same love.   By Morn­ing Star (Sally Jor­dan Austin)

Poetry Cor­ner Feb­ru­ary 2012 Silent Lotus’ Selected Poets’ Mal­colm David­son and his guest Irene Sher­lock           Fly­ing If I could move on tapered wing By feath­ered flight my mind would soar To see this world through minted eye. The social walls that kept me out Those haughty souls, cig­ars alight I’d see behind their cur­tains drawn And share the fear that fills the glass The pompous sound from mar­bled hall That drowns out noise from shantied town I’d fly a thread so fine and strong Con­nect­ing all from shore to shore Gos­samer winged this sound would go The sound of love trans­mit­ted long From soul to soul, be young or old To res­onate within us all And each would clasp the fil­a­ment bright And feel­ing strong from each to each We’d all embrace as cheek to cheek Yes, if I could fly on tapered wing, I’d glide through clouds of inner self And find the light that waits within.           Spirit of the White Fawn What cold heart would take a life as this? Inno­cent, play­ful, unknow­ing of the ways of man Fal­ter­ing steps, had hardly begun to find its foot­ing a flame of nature’s quirks extin­guished Read the Rest…

The Tiferet Face­book Page is a great place to share links to things you think our mem­bers will like. We’ve seen peo­ple shar­ing links to var­i­ous web­sites, videos and even to their own web­site.  One of our goals at Tiferet is to make sure peo­ple know about all the inter­est­ing things they can dis­cover by being a part of the com­mu­nity, so we have a new we want to offer for shar­ing links to Face­book. Instead of post­ing cer­tain links directly on the Tiferet Face­book, we’ve set up a spe­cial cat­e­gory, so you can post your link here, on Tiferet, then post the Tiferet link to the Face­book Page. How does this work? When links are posted directly to the Fan Page and some­one clicks on them, they are taken directly to that link.  This bypasses the Tiferet web­site.  By post­ing via a Tiferet Link, you will help keep peo­ple aware of TiferetJournal.com and give them access to other “Fea­tured” Tiferet links. How do I do it? It’s easy, sim­ply cre­ate a new post, and check off the “Rec­om­mended” Cat­e­gory, click “Pub­lish” then copy and paste the link to your newly pub­lished post on the Tiferet Face­book Page. Let’s look at it step by Read the Rest…

I found an amaz­ing web­site that allows you to see the scale of the “stuff” of our uni­verse.  From atoms to plan­ets, scroll the slider to see how big or small the items of our world are in a way you’ve never seen it before. Click here to check it out!

**Editor’s Note** It is with great plea­sure that we share our newest fea­tured mem­ber of Tiferet!  You can learn more on all fea­tured mem­bers by click­ing here. If you would like to be fea­tured you can click here and fill out the brief form. I’ve been a farmer, bar­tender, event pro­ducer and wildlife habi­tat reha­bil­i­ta­tor, but mainly I write and edit. Enter­tain­ment jour­nal­ist turned envi­ron­men­tal jour­nal­ist turned radio essay­ist turned holistic-spiritual news ser­vice edi­tor (re)turned enter­tain­ment jour­nal­ist. My goal is to write for the stage. Amy has a store on her web­site where you can pur­chase her book “Holy Smoke: Loose Herbs & Hot Embers for Intense Group Smudges & Smoke Prayers” (for any­one want­ing to purify or offer prayers by burn­ing herbs, espe­cially in groups. Go way beyond sage and smudge sticks by burn­ing loose herbs on hot char­coal. Cre­ate pow­er­ful aro­matic rit­u­als with smudge and smoke prayer blends for any cer­e­mo­nial occa­sion). We invite you to con­nect with Amy. Tiferet Mem­ber Pro­file Per­sonal Web­site Books: Link listed above Per­sonal Face­book Pro­file Sec­ondary Face­book Pro­file Face­book Fan Page

**Editor’s Note** It is with great plea­sure that we share our newest fea­tured mem­ber of Tiferet!  You can learn more on all fea­tured mem­bers by click­ing here. If you would like to be fea­tured you can click here and fill out the brief form. Vir­ginia Chase Sut­ton loves to travel and has recently returned from her third trip to Buenos Aires, a place she con­sid­ers as her sec­ond home. She col­lects vin­tage hats, evening bags and cos­tume jew­elry, and shops at sec­ond hand stores and yard sales. She has pub­lished two books of poetry: “” (Cha­toy­ant) and “” which won the Morse Poetry Prize. She has been the Louis Unter­meyer Scholar in Poetry at Bread Loaf and won the National Poet Hun. Her poems have appeared in “Paris Review” and “Ploughshares” among many other lit­er­ary pub­li­ca­tions, jour­nals and antholo­gies. Her MFA is from Ver­mont Col­lege of Fine Arts and she lives in Tempe, Ari­zona.   We invite you to con­nect with Vir­ginia. Tiferet Mem­ber Pro­file Per­sonal Web­site Books: Links listed above LinkedIn Facebook