Parabola's Summer 2004 issue:
Web of Life The very word "cosmos" signifies that the universe itself is a living organism, unimaginably vast in its extent and in the depths of its purposes and intelligence--and in its beauty and, above all, in its goodness. And, according to [the great spiritual traditions], to know this universe, to know reality, it is necessary for a man or a woman to perceive it with more than the intellect alone. It is necessary to perceive it with the unique source of perception by which beauty and goodness can be perceived--with the depth and subtlety of the power of feeling. The power of feeling...must be joined to the genius of the intellect in order to know the nature of reality. --from "All Those Shining Worlds" by Jacob Needleman
Cover: Huichol yarn mask Yarn pressed into beeswax on wood Nayarit, Mexico, c. 1995 Indigo Arts Gallery, Philadelphia,
www.indigoarts.com Photograph by David Heald
In this issue:
- "Ours Is Not a Dead Universe" by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
- The primacy of consciousness
- "Witnessing the Great Life" by Christopher Bamford
- An epiphany
- "Praying to God in Every Place" by Paul Sorrell
- The spiritual unity of humanity and nature
- "All Those Shining Worlds" by Jacob Needleman
- Finding the feeling component of knowing
- "Out of the Hidden Root" by Bahauddin Valad
- Reflections from the father of Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks and John Moyne
- "An Interactive Dialogue: Talmud and the Net" by Mel Alexenberg
- Multidirectional and multidimensional thought
- "The Self Who All Pervades"
- from the Upanishads
- "On Body of Water #901" by Le Anne Schreiber
- Living in beauty
- "Living Like a Natural Person" by Tom Harmer
- Being on the side of the earth
- "Fluent in Living" by Robert Rice
- Shocked into the present moment
- "When Words Are Abandoned: Feeling the Forest" by Jane Goodall (with an interview by Hope Ryden)
- Experiencing true awareness
- "The Real and the Mirage": An Interview with Mu Soeng by Richard Smoley
- Buddhism free of projection
- POINT OF VIEW: "Restless in the Web of Life" by Roger Lipsey
- Are we knowing participants?
Epicycles - Traditional stories from around the world
- "The Sacred Tree" / Hawaiian - retold by Caren Loebel-Fried
- "The Man and the Muskrat" / African - retold by Josepha Sherman
- "The Hunter and the Walrus" / Inuit - retold by Joseph Bruchac
- "The Farmer Who Wanted To Be a Jaguar" / Mayan - retold by Joseph Bruchac
Tangents - Reviews
- "The Vocabulary of the Unexpected" by Marvin Barrett
- A review of the film My Architect: A Son's Journey
- "Segal-san" by Roger Lipsey
- On a pioneer explorer of the inner world
- "Every Life a Story"
- A talk with a director of the Mythic Journeys conference