Moore promotes value of "educating the senses"

Joy A. Kirkwood blogs about Shaun McNiff's book, Earth Angels: Engaging the Sacred in Everyday Things (2001) in her post "Earth Angel" today. She paraphrases Thomas Moore in the book's foreword to say "in our quest for knowledge we have lost enchantment and the sense of the wonder of the world we live in." Kirkwood responds, "To this I say, Amen. For me the key is in what we treasure and why and to look again at the common things around us and to let ourselves be awed by life." In his foreword, Moore also states:

"I'd like strongly to affirm Shaun's interpretation of the Epicurean value of "educating the senses." I have no doubt that we have reduced experience to our mental life. We think of education as a mental exercise, and we even undergo therapy as though it were a way toward self-understanding. It's about time to broaden our notion of education, realizing that we have widespread illiteracy in the realm of the senses. Otherwise, how could we fill our cities with ugly buildings, and allow airlines to shut off all avenues to sensation as we travel the airways, and let businesses keep us away from rivers and lakes, and spend our days and hours of leisure in front of a television screen? Clearly, we need remedial education in the senses, to begin with. We need to learn how to live from the heart, the hands, the stomach, and the feet. And, close to my heart, we need to educate our ears so that we will no longer tolerate the soul-wounding noises that dominate modern life."

Kirkwood shares that she "has been involved in arts and education for adults and children for over thirty years. In 2008 to 2009 [she] also taught Expressive Art classes at Wellspring Calgary, an innovative cancer support centre in Alberta."

Read carefully with attention to beauty, form

"Benedict’s attention to reading adds another dimension to the contemplative life. In modern life we read mainly for information or entertainment, and writing about books tends to be critical rather than appreciative and exploratory. We have yet to rediscover the monastic practice of contemplative reading which is carried out with care, attention to beauty and form, and a meditative attitude." ─ Thomas Moore

Author Mindy Withrow blogs about Benedict’s Rule and reading, specifically, about Thomas Moore’s preface to the Rule published by Vintage Spiritual Classics (1998). Withrow quotes Moore to suggest his observations about appreciative and exploratory reading may help to guide our approaches to different types of writing.

She writes, "... I think we can apply the "appreciative and exploratory" attitude with "attention to beauty and form" to novels, short stories, and creative non-fiction as well as to poetry, and to diverse content as well as that which is more strictly "devotional." Any topic or form or approach that wedges open our spiritual understanding just a bit more is worth engaging."

Moore interviewed about deep democracy

Yesterday, Allan Hunter reviewed Michael Toms' A Time for Choices: Deep Dialogues for Deep Democracy, interviews with prominent thinkers post 9-11. Tom co-founded New Dimensions Media in California, and has been interviewing interesting people for thirty years.

The blog says, "Some of the people who appear in the book will be familiar, some less so. All are first rate thinkers - Howard Zinn, Jean Houston, Marianne Williamson, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Jane Hirshfield, Noam Chomsky, Thomas Moore, Sogyal Rinpoche… and many many more. It made me realize how tired I am of tv talking heads who always have an answer and who always have to prove someone wrong so they can be right. Real discussion is not the same thing as those boxing matches/slugging fests we have shoved at us in the name of 'opinion'."

Hunter contrasts Toms' presentation with television commentary: "This book truly is a way to begin thinking anew; it is about dialogue, not arguing (which is most of what we get treated to on TV) and it’s a skill we seem to have lost sight of."