The image of “beads on a necklace” has been prominent in my thoughts for over a year now. It is not a new direction or project, but rather a new image to describe the activities that have been integral to Mary’s Ward from its inception on May 13, 2006. Happy Twentieth Birthday, Mary’s Ward! The image first suggested itself when I was reading Journey into Kashmir and Tibet by Swami Abhedananda, whose party stayed during their travels by train, bus, horseback, and foot, at a se

I apologize for the delay in publishing May and June issues of Ascend. The fact is that the actual work of Mary's Ward is superseding the creative description of that work. The situation will be remedied soon! Thanks for your patience!

I was texting with a friend who uses a microphone to create texts. The phrase my friend was saying was "guard rails", but what came across my phone in text was "God reels". As a person who is sensitive to the way God often speaks quite softly through seemingly incoherent promptings, I was delighted with this erroneous phraseology. "God reels" exactly describes the seeings or many times hearings or feelings that later turn out to be signposts along the way of our spiritua

“In the Yoga as in life it is the man [the human] who persists unwearied to the last in the face of every defeat and disillusionment and of all confronting, hostile and contradicting events and powers who conquers in the end and finds his [their] faith justified because to the soul and Shakti [Divine's power imaged as the Universal Mother] in man [the human] nothing is impossible.” Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga , 773 “But outward circumstances are only a cover for the