I’ve been following a journaling guide to Jesus’ Two Great Commandments for the last three weeks and it has been a rich journey into my relationship to God and its benefits in my life, its blessings and challenges.** Amazingly, this week I suddenly realized as I was journaling that the Lord had been leading me […]

I have been reading and rereading and taking notes on a little book called The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello. It is a book full of wisdom about love and what it takes to love like God loves. Anthony de Mello was an Indian Jesuit priest and psychotherapist who wrote […]

Thanksgiving is not confined to one day a year; it underscores everything we do in our love for God, ourselves and our neighbors. First, we are grateful for the church calendar which reminds us about the history of our faith and why it means so much to us. We start the year with Advent, the […]

The life in Christ is not without its challenges and uncertainties; in fact, it seems as if these provocations can loom even bigger when we have given up control of our lives and destiny to God. We won’t all have the challenges that Paul faced when he was spreading the Gospel around the Mediterranean Sea […]

Our beautiful season of Advent starts in a week, but it is greatly overshadowed by the commercial use of Christianity’s foundational spiritual event in order to promote the materialism that dominates our society today. Two days ago I led a retreat on Preparation for Advent, the arrival of Jesus as a baby in this world. […]

There are very real Challenges when we follow the teachings and leadings of Christ. Because of our very human nature it might take some time to really live through the challenges.   Dealing with Doubts Doubts are bound to arise about God, about whether He loves to punish us or to love us, equating Him […]

You might ask, “where do you get your ideas for these blog posts?” And here is my latest experience: last Sunday our Adult Sunday School Class was led by our minister, Rev. John Cleghorn, who at one point said, “You know, disciple means learner.” That definition stayed with me all day Sunday and that’s how […]

It is clearly stated in different ways in the Bible that if you love God and follow His commandments to love and to treat our neighbors as we would like to be treated, then we will be blessed and know God’s grace and love and support. If we don’t love God and follow His commands, […]

To love as God loves means that we have to drop our prejudices and our judgments about others, we have to let go of everything that our culture has taught us and all that our ego desires, so that God’s love can flow through us unchanged. Our standard for love is God who “causes His […]

How do we get from our very human selves with our angers and fears and judgments and ego-centricity—all grounded in the world’s ways– to expressing the fruit of the Spirit in all that we do? How can we humans bring peace, joy and love, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control/humility to all whom we […]