The effort to untangle the human words from the divine seems not only futile to me but also unnecessary, since God works with what is. God uses whatever is usable in a life, both to speak and to act,...
The great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self-absorbed.
The problem with every sacred text is that it has human readers. Consciously or unconsciously, we interpret it to meet our own needs. There is nothing wrong with this unless we deny that we are doing...
The whole purpose of the Bible, it seems to me, is to convince people to set the written word down in order to become living words in the world for God’s sake. For me, this willing conversion of ink b...
The wind smelled like the moon. I went up there so many times in the weeks that followed that I no longer remember which night it was that God finally answered my prayer. I do not think it was right a...
The world for which you have been so carefully prepared is being taken away from you,' he said, 'by the grace of God.' (Walter Brueggemann)
The world for which you have been so carefully prepared is being taken away from you, he said, by the grace of God.
They sounded different from the mouth of a young mother than they did from the mouth of a widow. This was because the words did not come straight off the page. They percolated up through the silt and...
When we run from darkness, how much do we really know about what we are running from? If we turn away from darkness on principle, doing everything we can to avoid it because there is simply no telling...
This is not a how-to book, but if it were, the only instruction would be to become more curious about your own darkness. What can you learn about your fear of it by staying with it for a moment before...
To see takes time, like having a friend takes time. It is as simple as turning off the television to learn the song of a single bird. Why should anyone do such things? I cannot imagine—unless one is w...
About that too, ma’am, he said, writing up her citation, but what made
We have just enough religion to make us hate one another, Jonathan Swift once observed, but not enough to make us love one another.
We wanted More. We wanted a deeper sense of purpose. We wanted a stronger sense of God’s presence.
What if I could learn to trust my feelings instead of asking to be delivered from them? What if I could follow one of my great fears all the way to the edge of the abyss, take a breath, and keep going...
When my friend Matilda lay dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, she said that she had been prepared all of her life to choose between good and evil. What no one had prepared her for, she lamented, was to ch...
When we arrived in this large room, Rockwell put a fluorescent marker down where we entered so we could find the way back out again. When Hurd failed to do that, her teacher corrected her. In a cave,...
Who had persuaded me that God preferred four walls and a roof to wide-open spaces? When had I made the subtle switch myself, becoming convinced that church bodies and buildings were the safest and mos...
Who would stick around to wrestle a dark angel all night long if there were any chance of escape? The only answer I can think of is this: someone in deep need of blessing; someone willing to limp fore...
Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails. Wise people do not have to be cert...
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