Eleanor from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, is pondering navel-gazing after being surprised to learn that her adult son was unfamiliar with the term. Staring downward at one’s belly to induce a mystical trance has a long history: The...
Listeners weigh in on our discussion about thin places, those locales where the mundane and mystical appear to merge. This is part of a complete episode.
Jejune, meaning insipid or superficial, comes from Latin jejunus, meaning empty. The same root gives us jejunum, the part of the small intestine that is usually empty when autopsied. The same idea of emptiness is reflected in the related French and...
In Zen Buddhism, the term all one refers to a state of enlightenment that’s the opposite of isolated and alone. The word alone, however, comes from the idea of “all on one’s own.” The word alone also gives us lone, lonely and...
woo-woo adj. concerned with emotions, mysticism, or spiritualism; other than rational or scientific; mysterious; new agey. Also n., a person who has mystical or new age beliefs. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)