Lent’s Labor: Practicing Silence – Part 3

Lent’s Labor: Practicing Silence – Part 3

Opportunities for love’s bond begins close at hand as paths cross in ordinary circumstances: within families (among the most severe testing ground), workplaces, classrooms, churches. A close encounter could lead to dramatic outcomes. Those faithful in large things...
Lent’s Labor: Searching Darkness – Part 2

Lent’s Labor: Searching Darkness – Part 2

Scripture has a pronounced bias favoring “light” and opposing “darkness.” But there’s a minority report as well, where the Holy One is encountered in darkness. Through the prophet Isaiah, God proclaims: “I will give you the treasures of darkness … that you may know...
Finding Awe

Finding Awe

How often do we feel awe? Our first response might be something like “Rarely,” because we may think of “awe” as being completely overwhelmed, flabbergasted, or awestruck by some amazing event. But awe is wider than that. Awe can result from any experience that leads...
Lent’s Labor: Making Space – Part 1

Lent’s Labor: Making Space – Part 1

The traditional emphases of Lent — prayer, fasting and almsgiving — are intensely personal but never merely private. Heyr himna smiður (“Hear, Heavenly Creator”), a 12th century Icelandic poem, states: “Listen, smith [artisan] of the heavens, what the poet asks. / May...
Living Into My Wokeness

Living Into My Wokeness

The term “woke” has been championed by those seeking more knowledge about issues and decried by others for being an overzealous attempt to reinterpret reality. Some politicians have picked up the term, lashing out at “wokeness” as if it were an extension of extreme...