About Daniel J. Miller

Dan Miller is the founder of thesacredbraid.com

The Icy Storm Within

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Daniel J. Miller

◊ Listening to Boredom (continued) Everything that happens to you is your teacher... the secret is to learn to sit at the feet of your own life and be taught by it. ~ Polly B. Berends ~ The cyclic tragedy of it all is that too often easily bored Read more [...]

Listening to Boredom

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Daniel J. Miller

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness . . . Frederick Buechner mentions four types of experience, four passageways through which we can enter Read more [...]

A Hole in the Soul

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Daniel J. Miller

Because, in one sense, people’s lives are so much busier today than, say, fifty years ago, because there are not only so many things to do but so many seemingly good things to do, we might not see another more telling situation, namely, that as civilization Read more [...]

Of Death, Birth, Old Souls, Suffering & Simple Gifts

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Daniel J. Miller

This week marked the thirty-eighth anniversary of my mom's death. My daughter, who never met my mother, was born twenty-six years from the date of her grandmother's death. Since my daughter's birth, this date has always had symbolic significance for me. Read more [...]

Everything is Gift

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Daniel J. Miller

“What counts on your path to fulfillment is that we remember the great truth that moments of surprise want to teach us: everything is gratuitous, everything is gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is the measure of our gratefulness. and Read more [...]

The Book that is My Life

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Daniel J. Miller

. . . continued from previous post Frederick Buechner encourages us to listen to our lives. Master storyteller, he knows the narrative quality of life, that we are not merely storytellers but storied-beings. So it behooves us (how often do I get to Read more [...]

Becoming Whole

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Daniel J. Miller

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments Read more [...]

Keeping Quiet

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Daniel J. Miller

Thinking of silence and listening, I was reminded yesterday of Pablo Neruda’s poem “Keeping Quiet.” Zookeeper, housekeeper, storekeeper, goalkeeper -- to be a keeper of something is to care for it, to protect it. This is a helpful reminder that Read more [...]

Silence: Another Image

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Daniel J. Miller

Many of you have sent me quotes or lyrics or passages that you have come upon this month that pertain to our theme and/or the reflections that I have sent to you about silence, stillness, listening, etc. Most recently CR came across these lines from Macrina Read more [...]

The Marsupial Heart

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Daniel J. Miller

It is an evocative and illuminating recognition that the word HEART is a marsupial carrying within it the words EAR, HEAR, and ART. Rather than view listening as something passive, we have the opportunity to move through our day as if we were artists Read more [...]

The Sacred Braid

Helping Persons and Communities Weave Lives of Spiritual Depth.

Author Archives: Daniel J. Miller