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Feature Section: Love and Joy
A Conversation with Neale Donald Walsch
Joel Anastasi
Heart Ralph Walker
Joy Like Lightning Dennis L. Trunk
Parental Love Catherine Tuerk
Miracles Around Us Gregory Fillar
Joy of Creative Movement Edward Jeffrey Hale
St. Aelred of Rievaulx on Friendship
Poetry: Gently the Boy I Was Franklin Abbot
Homosexuality is Spirit's Joy Gregory Kasperek
Effective Grass Roots Action
Eat, Drink and Be Merry
Well, at least be merry!
Robert Bahr ran a review of the book by this name by popular radio doctor Dean Edell in Celebrating the Self. A couple of citations are relevant to this issue of WCJ.
Actually contradicting the title, Edell says what can retard aging and age-related diseases is dramatically cutting protein and calorie intake. "Researchers at Cornell University found that restricting the number of calories eaten by lab rats resulted in the rats living longer--alot longer. A 40% reduction in food intake below that which the animal would have eaten on its own led to a remarkable 50% increase in lifespan. Applied to humans, that translates into another 40 years {onto an 80 year life]
He also reports that a study among a thousand men aged 45 to 59 showed that men with the lowest frequency of orgasms had twice the risk of death from all causes--most significantly from heart attack. The researchers concluded that the men with the greatest frequency of sex had a 50% reduction in mortality.
So, eat right, have a lot of sex--and maintain a healthy mental state. "Better moods and more positive feelings appear to pay more direct rewards than shedding a few pounds or dropping cholesterol points," Edell concluded.
Mindful Masturbation Bruce P. Grether
God in Drag Darren John Main
The Rapture Balance Janeson
Enter Your Temple Michael Goddart
Bodhisattva Watch: Joyful Participation
The spirituality of the Bodhisattva is called
"The Way of Joyful Participation
in the Sorrows of the World."Try using that phrase as a mantra
Joseph Campbell: Oh, Wonderful!
According to [the] mysticism of sexual love, the ultimate experience of love is a realization that beneath the illusion of two-ness dwells identity: "each is both." This realization can expand into a discovery that beneath the mutitudinous individualities of the whole surrounding universe - human, animal, vegetable, even mineral - dwells identity; whereupon the love experience becomes cosmic, and the beloved who first opened the vision is magnified as the mirror of creation. The man or woman knowing this experience is possessed of what Schopenhauer called "the science of beauty everywhere." He "goes up and down these worlds, eating what he desires, assuming what forms he desires," and he sits singing the song of universal unity, which begins" "Oh, wonderful! Oh, wonderful! Oh, wonderful!" (The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p. 280)
Seeking, Finding, & Giving Love & Joy Jeff DeVore
It Is, After All, a Spiritual Journey David Jonson
Shadow Becomes Joy David Scherzer
Spiritual Travailing George Paris
Scatological Reflections John Steczynski
Reviews and Books
The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri Krandall Kraus
An American Family by Jon & Michael Galluccio
Stealing Jesus by Bruce Bawer Mike Green
The Direct Path by Andrew Harvey Toby Johnson
Christopher Isherwood: His Era, His Gang and the Legacy of the Truly Strong Man by David Izzo
Spiritual Journeys Along the Yellow Brick Road
by Darren John Main
For Your Information
Call for Submissions
Link to Toby Johnson's GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness In a tie with Kraus & Borjas's IT'S NEVER ABOUT WHAT IT'S ABOUT Toby Johnson's GAY SPIRITUALITY was awarded a Lammy for Religion/Spirituality by the Lambda Literary Foundation, Chicago, May 31, 2001 Last update June 21, 2001
