On a pilgrimage to Israel, I discovered how seeing scenes of Jesus' ministry helped me remember, ponder, interpret, and commune. I brought back a placemat with 15 little scenes showing Jesus around the Sea of Galilee and on the water. After a dozen years, a couple days ago I saw these scenes in a transforming way. A couple days ago, this morning I looked at it anew; it was transforming to imagine myself in these scenes. I share this spiritual experience in the hope that those who listen will be may find creative ways to do something similar.

In this brief reflection, I sketch the simplest path to character growth I know. The goal: a strong, balanced character, centered in God. The recipe is wisely to combine spiritual awareness, including humility about our need to grow, with a down-to-earth realism about the facts of whatever situations in which he found himself.

I also note something like the same combination in spiritual leaders Tenzin Gyatso (the Dalai Lama, exiled from Tibet) and Desmond Tutu (who did so much for reconciliation in South Africa).

I comment on two beatitudes and on realizing that God gives the resulting character growth that comes from living supreme desire to do the will of God. That life yields joy.

Jesus had an excellent, down-to-earth, realistic grasp of facts, including what we today would call scientific knowledge. He was a keen observer--fearless in facing facts, logical in his reasoning, and deeply insightful about causes and effects.

Two examples show why we often fail to recognize Jesus' scientific realism. He expressed his insights in ordinary language that everyone could understand.

Drawing on chapter 5 in A Taste of Joy and Liberty, the blogpost at UniversalFamily.org introduces us to ways we can apply his first-century achievement in our own times. Our world urgently needs to see scientific living and spiritual living walking hand in hand.

In speaking of the treasure hidden in a field, Jesus referred, I believe, to the kingdom of God within you. This video describes the experience of God's spirit within first by quotes from Jesus' Bible, the Hebrew Scriptures. Next, we go on to the idea that we do well to become friends with this gift of the presence of God. Finally comes the outpouring of a list of many of the blessings that await us from the inner divine source. This brief introduction is developed in the blogpost at UniversalFamily.org

I used to see my neighbor across the street in a fascinating duet that he and his two-year-old daughter had evolved. He would stand in the middle of the yard, and she would run around and play close to him and sometimes come to him and put up her arms to be picked up. The first story illustrates how we need the faith of a little child to receive the kingdom of God.

Then I reflect on the gift of a loving God and the faith—living faith, receptive and active—that that enables us to receive God's loving gift. I close these thoughts by sharing the symbolism that I find in an image of a man with a funnel in his head.

I created this video based on my experiences of living the ideas that I presented in chapter three in my book, A Taste of Joy and Liberty, a chapter that you can read in my introduction to that book on UniversalFamily.org.

I tell of working for months on a workshop on loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. I pose the question of how the most central truth of our relationships with God and human kind relate with the greatest commandment (to love). Finally, I make a correction in my new book, A Taste of Joy and Liberty: A Philosopher Encounters the Gospel of Jesusl

I've been on a quest to live--and write about--loving God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength. Yesterday I sent to my editor friend a revised section on strength. She discovered weaknesses in it. It didn't take long for me to realize (this is a pattern) that she had uncovered a fresh, hungry need for my growth. After sleeping on the problem, I woke up with a breakthrough. Of course it takes longer to form the habit and acquire the virtue. But here is an indication of what I've begun to form my habit around.

The faith of a little child not only enables us to join the kingdom family of God. It also continues to guide us as we progress. Jesus's teachings and interactions on this theme are each marked by a wonderful simplicity. And these teachings in their variety touch on several concepts that are part of the whole truth of faith.

A 21-year-old computer whiz liked the concept of the wonderfulness within but not the concept of the spirit of God within. He finds God through Edmund Husserl's phenomenological philosophy of religious experience.

After acknowledging the failure of an experiment in the last class meeting (falling across the finish line), I summarize a five-week class, "The Journey from Easter to Pentecost." Then I distinguish garden-variety spiritual experience from the taste-and-see variety.