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Write these words. On a postcard. Today.

Approx. read time: 1:30 min. In the early quiet of a recent morning, a thought comes to me. More than a thought: an assignment, really, with a subtle force of urgency: Write these words. On a postcard. Today. And these are the words that arrive:  Dear Secretary Blinken:  The madness of the Russia/Ukraine situation is… Read more »

Live with a good heart

  Approx. read time: 1:45 min. I’m playing with words again. A friend says to me: “I’m struggling with negativity.” My first thought is: Hooray! You’re willing to name what you’re feeling! Negativity is one of the darker emotions—not an enemy come to do battle, but a messenger with something to tell us. So I… Read more »

If bread and wine …

Approx. read time: 2:30 min. For Sunday morning worshipers, the deepest dark days of pandemic threw us off our routine. Well, I think, with churches closed, I suddenly have occasion to sit deeply, at home, with the Eucharistic Prayer. Again and again, a simple line from this ancient prayer draws me into untethered contemplation: And… Read more »

Honestly …

Approx. read time: 1:30 min. Honestly, I don’t understand this crazy world, its smash-and-grab ethos, greed without guardrails; human and creational suffering as the cost (borne by the sufferers) of doing business the way we do. Honestly, I can’t wrap my mind around the daily wash of tragedies—the forces of Nature, the works of human… Read more »

Set your face like flint

Approx. read time: 2:10 min Yesterday my alarm sounds at 11:30 a.m., reminding me to pull away from my work for 20 minutes of exercise before lunch. I drop what I’m doing, lay out my exercise mat, and turn on a current affairs program to carry me through sit-ups, push-ups, and various twists and turns…. Read more »

The fire that impels me to write

Approx. read time: 2:20 min A spiritual wakeup call came to me some years back, when I came across a blunt phrase of 16th-century writer, mystic, and Carmelite reformer Teresa of Avila. “The world is on fire,” she writes, “and this is no time to be concerned with unimportant things.” A spiritual wakeup call indeed,… Read more »

Lamb of God

  Approx. read time: 1:50 min. I awaken at 4:30 a.m., an hour too early to rise. But here I am, awake. I look up through darkness to a ceiling I cannot see. Lamb of God, I begin to pray … Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world … The darkness… Read more »

My Advent longing

Approx. read time: 2:10 min I await the end of the world of oppression, injustice, mean-spirit, rancor, power over, diminishment of humanity and decency and dignity of each one whether low, high, or somewhere in the middle. I await the end of the world of suspicion and judgment and fear and mindless pushback against what… Read more »

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