FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014

Hi Friends,

I am inviting you to join a new group.

This one is going to be different.

I am starting this group to explore nothing less than… how to live. How we might become a little more clear on such questions as:

What matters?

How can I act with more consistency in my life, and less confusion?

What increases my capacity for love?

What do I do with my sadness or my anger?

What I want to pursue, in this group, is a renewed sense of the sacred, but one that does not rely on supernatural claims. A sense of the sacred that is grounded in this life — your life as lived, full of everyday experiences.

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How are we going to pursue such an ambitious (audacious, you say) goal?

Well, that’s what we are going to try to figure out. I dont have the answers of course. But I do have the urge to try, together.

I propose a monthly meeting at my house (first one on Thursday, October 16, in just over two weeks), for which we do a small amount of reading in advance.

So, for example, one month we may read short excerpts from the Epicureans, the Stoics, the ancient Greeks. The next, from Montaigne and Shakespeare. The next from the French Enlightenment, or Nietzsche, or James, or Dawkins, or from current-day findings in anthropology and neuroscience.

The intention will not be a mere intellectual exercise, though, or a vigorous debate for its own sake — not at all. Our intention will be simple, every time: to deepen our lives in a lasting way.

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For the first meeting we will discuss the so-called “prehistoric” era, and our earliest ancestors’ understandings of themselves and their relationships with the world around them. Particularly their relationships to other animals. Seems a good place to start, since that’s how humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years before the modern era.

If this appeals to you, then join us!

Love,

Tom