Meet Thomas Moore in Plano or Dallas, Texas

If you're near Dallas, Texas on Wednesday 10 October or Thursday 11 October, attend a public presentation by Thomas Moore. On Wednesday he speaks at the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development, on the Plano campus of Southern Methodist University at 7:00 p.m. His topic, Counseling as Care of the Soul, includes "... the role of dreams, deep narratives, recurring images, intuition and spiritual issues in counseling of all types. It also shows how to deal with concrete matters like making a home, finding your own work, having a purpose, dealing with love and satisfying deep desires." View the online flyer for more information. This presentation is free. Space is limited so please pre-register.

The next evening at 7:00 p.m., Moore speaks at The First Unitarian Church of Dallas on Preston Road at Normandy. His exploration of Sensuous, Worldly Spirituality suggests "It’s time to rethink spirit and the world, discovering how to live a joyous life in the material realm while also developing a deep sense of meaning and an open imagination." The suggested donation for this event is $15.00 U.S. Individual or group registration is available online. Bring a friend.

Barque coverage
30 Aug 2012 "Tickets available for Moore at SMU in Plano, Texas"
4 Aug 2011 "Moore talks at SMU Plano campus, October 2012"

Join Thomas Moore "on the road" next month

Georgia O'Keeffe

Attend one of these events if you'd like to talk about spirituality, healing, soul and enchantment with Thomas Moore next month. Moore describes his "Travel October 2012" as stops to get together for conversation and meaningful exchange.

Moore threatens, "As I get older I’m thinking about putting an end to all the travel, so there won’t be many more occasions for you and me to meet, outside of my continuing presence in New Hampshire, New York City and the Isles of the Celts."

For he's a jolly good fellow: Hip, hip, hooray!

Happy Birthday, Ben! In "My Father's 100th", Thomas Moore describes his dad's special birthday party and shares the secret of his longevity: "He loves people and treats them with respect. He rarely drops his sense of humor and his outrageous feeling for fun. Ordinary people are happy to be around him, so much so that in his early 90’s a hospital hired him to be their go-between for their Alzheimer patients. He could laugh with these people and somehow reach into their world and sense their needs." We have saints among us and Moore knows his father to be one of them.

Enchantment provides a renewable energy for life

Today Thomas Moore writes a new blog entry, "Enchanted Lives" on his site. He discusses his background associations with re-enchantment and our continuing need to "wake up the imagination and make life worth living because of the world’s beauty and its power to excite us."

Moore considers the work of Teilhard de Chardin, Marsilio Ficino and William Morris as contributions to this re-visioning. He concludes:

"Notice how often I use 're-.' It means to look again with fresh eyes at something that has lost its vitality. I want to 're-' everything, especially those things that deaden us and keep our imaginations numb and take away the wonder and thrill of being in this animated and spirited world." 

Perhaps re-ligion has a re-activating role as well in this re-vitalization.

Learning may be a pleasurable spiritual practice

Reading Monk by Odilon Redon

Spirituality & Health magazine offers Thomas Moore’s September-October column, "The Spiritual Practice of Study" for online reading. Moore writes:

"In my spiritual life, study is perhaps my most important practice. It’s my way of remaining a monk. And I’m worried that it isn’t more widely prized and practiced. If there is one thing I find lacking in the spirituality I come across in my travels, it’s a studied intelligence and sharp wit about things of the spirit. Some of my academic friends don’t like the word spirituality, because spirituality is so often full of emotionalism ― emotion without an intelligence.

I admit that study doesn’t seem a very sexy way to be spiritual, and yet I know that there is deep pleasure to be found in good language and exciting ideas. When I’m away from home I yearn to get back to my desk and library and open up a book on, say, some obscure figure in the Italian Renaissance that has a world to reveal to me."

He urges readers to lose themselves and find themselves in the pleasures of learning. You may enjoy Moore's column from November-December 2009, "Shades of Truth" in which he explores the notion of spiritual sentimentality.