Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not "How can we hide our wounds?" so we don't have to be embarrassed, but "How can we put our woundedness in the service of...
02519 – Lighten Your Load!
Three of the heaviest elements in the universe are guilt, worry, and fear. Lugging them around will zap our energy and drain our morale, leaving us physically tired and spiritually weary. Lighten your load! It's a good first step in caring for your soul.
02009 – Different Types of Courage
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
01764 – Humanity Has a Choice of Action
[from his time as an inmate at Auschwitz:] The experiences of camp life show that humanity does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Humanity can preserve a...
00373 – Becoming More Fully Human
My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the...
00278 – Separating Spiritual from Physical?
In short, our congregations are marked by a warped spirituality. We have been formed spiritually in ways that bracket the realities of violence and poverty and oppression, ignoring them (at worst) or confining them (at best) to the margins of our attention. We have...
00045 – Practicing Dying
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...
00008 – Woundedness: Source of Shame or Healing?
Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not, "How can we hide our wounds?" so we don't have to be embarrassed, but "How can we put our woundedness in the service of...