Plato once said that pain restores order to the soul. Rumi said that it lops off the branches of indifference. The throbbing vein / will take you further / than any thinking.14 Whatever else it does,...
If Jesus were in charge of an average congregation I figure there would be about four people left there on Sunday mornings, and chances are those four would be fooling themselves. Jesus would greet ne...
If Jesus meant for his followers to rule the world, then why did he teach them to wash feet?
I was so busy serving the Divine Presence that we never got any time alone anymore.
E. B. White once wrote, I can’t decide whether to enjoy the world or improve the world; that makes it difficult to plan the day.
As many years as I have been listening to Easter sermons, I have never heard anyone talk about that part. Resurrection is always announced with Easter lilies, the sound of trumpets, bright streaming l...
As hard as I have tried to remember the exact moment when I fell in love with God, I cannot do it. My earliest memories are bathed in a kind of golden light that seemed to embrace me as surely as my m...
According to a recent article in the New York Times, few parents expose their children to those works in the original these days, and some of their reasons make sense. Who wants children growing up wi...
The real problem has far less to do with what is really out there than it does with our resistance to finding out what is really out there.
Spending extended amounts of time inside other religious worldviews has loosened the screws on my own, which is beginning to seem like a good thing. Disowning God has been a great help to me. Owning m...
Since some people consider being human a liability, and fully would only make things worse, I should perhaps explain what I mean. To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being al...
Maybe that is the difference between pastoral counselors and spiritual directors. We go to counselors when we want help getting out of caves. We go to directors when we are ready to be led farther in....
If Bible lovers paid as much attention to Leviticus 25 as to Leviticus 18, then we might discover that God is at least as interested in economics as in sex.
I thought that being faithful was about becoming someone other than who I was, in other words, and it was not until this project failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more usefu...
I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness...
Effective people are busy people. Religious people are busy people. For millions and millions of people, busy-ness is The Way of Life. How are you? Busy like crazy, but what else is new? And you? Some...
Christians are not particularly gifted at knowing how we sound to others, especially in parts of the world where our voices are the loudest and most numerous.
At the very least, most of us need someone to tell our stories to. At a deeper level, most of us need someone to help us forget ourselves, a little or a lot. The great wisdom traditions of the world a...
A priest is a priest, no matter where she happens to be. Her job is to recognize the holiness in things and hold them up to God. Her job is to speak in ways that help other people recognize the holine...
But I know that I have an easier time loving humankind than I do loving particular human beings.