Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary. from Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church
It is too small a thing to redeem only a few. God wants us all. This good news deserves our full acceptance. Thomas Merton wrote, “A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found; for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough...
When you seek to affirm your unity by denying that you have anything to do with anyone else, by negating everyone else in the universe until you come down to you: what is there left to affirm? Even if there were something to affirm, you would have no breath left with...
When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate...
Everyone in the world, one way or another has gone to bed with fear or pain or loss or disappointment. And yet each of us has awakened arisen, somehow made our ablutions and said “morning, how are ya?…Fine, thanks, and you?” It’s amazing. Wherever that abides in the...
It seems difficult for us to distinguish between our “personal” relationship with God and the rampant individualism we practice in our politics. Do we dare keep voting according to our pocketbooks and private morality? Yes, we are God’s beloved, but so is everyone...
It is simply out of the question that God ‘helps’ the Germans or the French or the English. God does not even ‘help’ us Swiss. God helps justice and love. God helps the kingdom of heaven, and that exists across all national boundaries. The foolish mixing of...
Shame seems most widespread and deepest among the very people who take rightness and goodness most seriously. It is a dimension of condemnation that reaches into the deepest levels of our souls. In shame we are self-condemned for being the person we are. It touches...
Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.