The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self—to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you...
Who God is and how big God is does not change with our acknowledgment or ignorance of God. What changes is the size of our life and our environment and our hope. Take God for granted and your world shrinks. Get a glimpse of who God is and your universe expands....
At the end of this day, the world will either be a more or less kind, compassionate, and loving place because of your presence. Your move.
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...
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this...
I am convinced that a community-called-beloved is possible. This is an admittedly fragile possibility, but it is not a utopian dream. I believe that people of good will harbor a persistent hope that our planet can be a place of belonging for all its inhabitants. To...
Friendship is the reasonable passion for truly human fellowship; it is a mutual affection cemented by loyalty. The more people begin to live with one another as friends, the more privileges and claims to domination become superfluous. The more people trust one...
The Lord bless you and keep you.The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May God give you grace never to sell yourself short.Grace to risk something big for something good.Grace to remember that the world is now too dangerous for anything but...
Christianity is about water: “Everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” It’s about baptism, for God’s sake. It’s about full immersion, about falling into something elemental and wet. Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking...
Mary made her womb available for a holy conception and birth. She surrendered to the mysterious, divine working of God, knowing that the holy child within her would change the world. May we, too, open our minds, hearts, and bodies to the mysterious working of God , so...