Issue 155 | The Sun Magazine

October 1988

Readers Write

Signs And Symbols

The Alphabet Lady; a broad, black, shiny feather; a penny on the tip of the lion’s nose

By Our Readers
Quotations

Sunbeams

Conclusions arrived at through reasoning have very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives.

Carlos Castaneda
The Fire from Within

The Sun Interview

The Politics Of Radical Clarity

Helen Palmer And The Enneagram

I need to get clearer and clearer with my clients, and train as many people as I can to look at their projections and eliminate them. All I can really do is keep my corner of the world clean, and teach others. Good political work is not concerned with the consequence or the outcome; you pay attention to the process, to the quality of your work at every step of the way. That’s very different from trying to take out the top man by assassination. The problem is that a new top man will always succeed the one you get rid of, if the root psychological problems of the society remain unchanged.

By D. Patrick Miller
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

On The Defense Of Habits

I started smoking cigarettes four months ago, out of the blue. I didn’t question myself about it, just figured that a nasty habit had swooped out of the sky and carried me off in its talons.

By Jack Underhill
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Keeping A Short Bridge

Buddhist-Christian Dialogue

For seven years, Buddhist and Christian meditators have met at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, to understand each other’s religious experience, and to search out what it may have to offer the modern world.

By Stephen T. Butterfield
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Graduation

It was a perfect day, the sky clear, as blue and true as a pledge of love. On the campus, the magnolias were in bloom, the huge, creamy-white flowers richly fragrant. Spring was everywhere, shamelessly beautiful, wet lips laughing, hair unpinned.

By Sy Safransky
Fiction

you never realized

a woman comes to the door, wearing a saffron robe, her straight hair in a brown bun, her face stern but capable of merriment. her long robes sway, shine purples and royal blues as you follow her.

By Deborah Shouse
Fiction

Permission To Speak

One night as I lay in my crib, my tired mother, her patience spent, came into the room and stole my voice.

By Neena Beber
Fiction

Mister Duck

He is a Southern suburban white boy now all grown-up, born too late for Vietnam and not late enough for high-yield T-bills, so he is stuck somewhere, an underground movement of one. That suits him fine.

By Cal Massey