We are not loved because we are so beautiful and good. We are beautiful and good because we are loved. from Theology of Joy
01349 – We are Loved!
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01333 – Dawn: An Awakening in Love
The dawn is an awakening to a deepening realization of who we really are in and with God and the world, and of what has been going on within us in the night. Always, and most important, the dawn is an awakening in love. Contemplatives of all traditions agree on one...
01324 – The Silence of God in the Company of Friends
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,...
01318 – Faith: Exploring, Exposing, & Testing
To have faith is to explore--and go on exploring--the life of the spirit on the only journey that matters: that of becoming a more rounded and authentic human being. It is to expose yourself to what has been thought of most value by past generations and test it in the...
01262 – God is the Subject of Worship
Because God is the subject of worship, we must back up a step to recall that, before liturgy can involve the work of the people who offer their praise, it begins with the presence of God graciously inviting that response. It seems to me that some of the worship wars...
01247 – Faith: Propositional Truth vs. Personal Experience
When the nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said that God is dead, he was not making an ontological point. He was making an existential point. He was not announcing that God had died, but that our experience of God had died. This was due, in part, to...
01181 – Studying Hymnody
A hymn can be defined as a poetic statement of a personal religious encounter or insight, universal in its truth, and suitable for corporate expression when sung in stanzas to a hymn tune. Perhaps few forms of poetry are so widely known and used, and so generally...
01162 – Jesus: Human and Divine
The God who in and through Jesus reveals Himself is human. And the human being who emerges in and through Jesus is divine. This is the specific characteristic of the Christian experience of God and human beings, one that is different from that of Judaism and paganism....
00983 – Demand Freedom
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
00895 – The Highest Function of Music-Making
Great truths of physical energy plus imaginative vision plus human consolation are experienced through great music. Here is the highest function of music-making. In the words of…Abraham Joshua Heschel: “Listening to great music is a shattering experience, throwing the...