The soul is always complicated. Most of its thought and emotions could never be expressed in plain language. You could have the patience of Job and still never understand your partner (or friend or lover or family member), because the soul by nature doesn't lend...
I still love the church. I love the church universal, as well as the church local (red brick, white-columned with deacons smoking in the parking lot). With all of its dysfunction and flesh marks, with all of its confusion and humanity, it is still the best thing God...
In the Christian tradition Pentecost is not a polite occasion. It was full of fire, wind, confusion, and a diversity of linguistic utterance. It was a divine mess. And all of this led to healing and transformation. We need more mess like this.
God,Grant that I may pass through the coming year with a faithful heart. There will be much to test me and make weak my strength before the year ends.In my confusion I shall often say the word that is not true and do the thing of which I am ashamed. There will be...
The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. In the early nineteenth century, fifteen hours was the ordinary day's work for a man; children sometimes did as much, and very commonly did twelve hours a day. When meddlesome busybodies...
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can...
Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.
I’ve come to see that the call of God, the love that bids us welcome, is always a call to become the true you. Not a doormat. The true you. Not an imitation of someone else. The true you: someone made in the image of God, deserving of and receiving love. The ability...
Slow me down, Lord.Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind.Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time.Give me, amid the confusion of the day, the calmness of the everlasting hills.Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with...
Jesus experienced the silence of God in the company and companionship of his closest friends. Did they fail him? Yes, perhaps here more than anytime earlier in his ministry, but they did not fail him completely, at least not yet. They were with him--awake or asleep,...