spiritual growth
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The tipping point
Advent is an awkward, unsettled, ambiguous season. Retail Christmas decorations pop up as early as midsummer, and Christmas music starts filling the airwaves in November. The Hallmark Channel runs Christmas movies year-round. In churches, the urge to decorate for Christmas and sing Christmas music starts as soon as Advent begins. And in our homes, some Continue reading
Advent, Aldersgate experience, already and not yet, baptism, Damascus Road, enlightenment, Holy Spirit, John Wesley, Letters to a Young Poet, little Lent, living the questions, Magnum Mysterium, Messiah, Rex Tremendum, Rilke, spiritual baptism, spiritual growth, St. Paul, waiting for messiah, Wittgenstein -
The wisdom of the wood sorrel
When the teacher makes the same point again and again, you can be sure it will be on the test. In the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1-16), Jesus said, “the last will be first, and the first will be last” (v. 16). At the end of the previous chapter he said, Continue reading
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Lookin’ for love
It’s a mystery to me how the thing we want most in life, the very essence of life itself – the treasure greater than all treasures, the pearl of great value (Matt. 13:44-46) – should be the most elusive. It seems at times as if our creator made us with an insatiable desire for that Continue reading
Andrew Weil, authentic relationship, Christian love, craving, desire for God, forgiveness, god-shaped hole, God-shaped vacuum, greatest commandment, growth in faith, hunger for God, Johnny Lee, love, love your neighbor, our hearts are restless, Pascal, pearl of great value, reconciliation, restlessness, spiritual growth, St. Augustine, what I want most -
Three Rs for today
Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart. (Joel 2:12a) Seldom has a question caught my attention as suddenly and completely as the one I overheard on a busy street in Manhattan forty years ago. I had spent the day in Midtown and was headed to catch a bus for Continue reading
a better life, Ash Wednesday, choices, choosing, course corrections, destination, journey, Lent, life's journey, orientation to life, renewal, renewing, reorientation, repent, returning, returning home, sin, spiritual growth, spiritual hunger, Wendell Berry, Where am I going, wilderness experience, will of God
The Sauntering Pilgrim 