A spiritual reality underlies everything. What if everything is spiritually mental, rather than physically material? God — Good, Spirit, Love, Life, Truth — is everywhere and is All. God is infinite and therefore all-knowing and all-powerful. God can have no opposite. You can’t have something else besides infinity. God is Mind, and we are God’s…

The untrue story of Saint Urho. In 1956 in the small town of Virginia, Minnesota, Richard L. Mattson and his coworker at the local department store Gene McCavic, both Finnish Americans, decided it was high time the Finns had their own holiday honoring a saint. Since the popular legend says that St. …

The human condition(ing). In a recent episode of the TV series The Chosen (episode 7 of season 3), Mary Magdalene (Elizabeth Tabish) — in a conversation with Matthew (Paras Patel), who has been struggling to commit to his faith — tells him something profound: “Our lives are often painful, yes. So we think…

Good conquers evil. The popular Hindi festival of Holi is a national holiday in India, and it’s also observed by Indians anywhere they reside across the world. Marking the beginning of Spring, it falls on the last day of the last full-moon day of the Hindu lunar calendar. …

Resisting change. Talk about lifelong learning. I can hardly keep up. Don’t get me wrong. I love to learn. I do. But things seem to be changing more quickly than ever before. I barely get used to doing something one way, and it changes again. For sure, we’re experiencing the exponential nature…

Finnish Culture Day. On February 28, 1835, linguist Elias Lönnrot was putting the finishing touches on his life’s work, the manuscript he’d been researching with a team of assistants for many years — The Kalevala. …

Talk about a melting pot. Zamboanga City, on the island of Mindanao, comprises an extraordinarily diverse population of nearly one million. Back before the Spanish arrived, Malay settlers were here for thousands of years along with the indigenous peoples. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Chinese and Malay frequently traded here. When Arab missionaries…

How speaking in parables works. After Jesus told the Parable of the Sower, his disciples asked him why he was always answering a question with a story. Jesus replied: “You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom. You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight — it hasn’t been given to them…

First, Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday). Tomorrow Lent begins — which means that today people around the world are celebrating Fat Tuesday (that’s Mardi Gras in French). The word Lent comes from the Old English lencten meaning “springtime.” Around the fourth century, Christians began to mark a season of Lent by depriving themselves of something (a…