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...
There is no such thing as redemptive violence. Violence doesn’t save; it only destroys—in both short and long term. Jesus replaced the myth of redemptive violence with the truth of redemptive suffering. He showed us on the cross how to hold the pain and let it...
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
When I was a medical school professor, I invited my students to view their own experiences of sickness and medical care as a way to empathize with their patients’ experiences. Like them, we can prepare for our dying by “practicing” dying in response to situations of...
But transformation, the mystery we’re examining, more often happens not when something new begins but when something old falls apart. The pain of something old falling apart—chaos—invites the soul to listen at a deeper level. It invites, and sometimes forces the soul...