As the first light of morning gently peeled back the shadows of night, I stepped onto my front porch with a cup of coffee. Days are getting shorter as we move toward autumn. Just a few weeks ago, it was bright and sunny at this same hour. I like this… Read More »Alone and All One
Growing up in Pennsylvania, I was aware of people who were Amish and Mennonite. Both groups are from the same branch of Christianity called Anabaptists. Neither group is simply a religion. They are ways of living, cultures, with social structures and customs which include their religious beliefs. To leave these… Read More »Intentional Living and Discernment
Sometimes, most of us wonder about the quality of our lives. Are we satisfied with life? Are we happy? Is something missing? Could life be better? I suspect that when these questions are asked, like around birthdays or significant changes, we become aware of the ways that the lives we… Read More »The Perfect Life or the Happy Life?
Stories have a certain kind of potency to them. Stories convey life lessons that often make rote learning seem shallow. Long after they are told, stories can continue to inspire the hearer who in turn can draw multiple layers of meaning while ruminating on the parable. This is the case… Read More »The Gift that is Present
About a week ago, one of my Facebook (FB) friends posted this comment as a status up-date: “Everybody sins & God loves everybody. No exceptions. How come people like to separate the clauses?” I may not have given the comment much notice, but this FB friend is known to be… Read More »Sin: Can We Talk About It?
In the mid 1980’s, I read a novel by May Sarton: Anger. Because her autobiographic work, The Journal of a Solitude, touched me deeply, I hoped her novel exploring expressions of anger would help me sort out my own experience of anger. Anger is an emotion which has complicated my… Read More »Anger: A Signal for Change
I sat on the bench of a picnic table. A short distance in front of me, a steep hillside dropped down to a stream of blue water fed by glaciers. Further on the horizon were majestic mountains. For about two hours, I enjoyed this view while watching the skies change.… Read More »Expanding Awareness
Meditation is a spiritual practice that I was informally introduced to in my youth. A few of my teachers in Catholic school encouraged me to practice “quiet prayer” as they called it. Later, in college, I read some books about meditation and tried to figure it out on my own.… Read More »Things That Would Have Been Helpful To Know When I Began a Meditation Practice