I don’t need to tell you that our lives today are crazy with busyness: we have to-do lists that are endless and jobs that we carry with us through pda’s and i-pads on the weekends and even on vacations. Even stay-at-home parents feel pressured into taking on more and more activities for their kids, so […]

If our goal is to become whole, integrated people, “perfected” in the sense of the New Testament Greek word teleo[finish, complete, fulfill, to be completed, fulfilled, perfected, ended][1], if we want to fulfill our created purpose, then the major task of our lives is to separate ourselves out from the culture in which we were […]

I realized this morning that I am on a threshold to something as yet unknown. The signs are clear now that I have put them together: I am unsure of the territory ahead; things feel like they are shifting under my feet; I am more engaged in negative thinking—usually I can separate from it easily; […]

In the documentary, ”Face to Face with Carl Jung” Part 1,[1] the pioneering Swiss psychiatrist, was asked if he believed in God. Then eighty-four he answered, “That is difficult to answer…I know… I don’t need to believe.” How many of us can say that I know God? I would guess that many would say we […]

If I live by the two great commandments, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “Love your neighbor as yourself,”[Matthew 22:37-8] I am living at the heart of Jesus’ teachings. I am also loving in the most radical way possible: returning to […]

There are many paths into the Life of the Spirit: through Bible study and focus on God, through meditation or prayer,  to name a few, but to me one of the most powerful is gratitude. Gratitude is an acknowledgement of all we’ve been given by God: LIFE ITSELF! which is an incredible gift, talents and […]

On Mondays I post my blog on my website, Facebook and our church ning site. Last week I began to post some brief thoughts for each weekday after Monday on Facebook at facebook.com/#!/pages/By-the-waters/146585815373488. On Friday I was essentially writing about bringing in the kingdom here on earth. The kingdom of heaven is very much on […]

When I was growing up in the forties and fifties, in the Christian church things were pretty much set in concrete. One was a Presbyterian(like my family) or Catholic or Methodist or Baptist or Episcopalian. We didn’t entertain other beliefs, we didn’t visit other churches, and certainly if we were Protestant, we would never enter […]

Calved from the great glacier that inches its way each year across Greenland towards the Atlantic Ocean, an iceberg crashes into the ocean and floats freely with the currents. It carries with it some 5,000 years of accumulated debris, rocks and other things that are slowly released into the ocean as it melts away. Depending […]

In  daily emails since Christmas Fr. Richard Rohr has been writing about the second half of life, so I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic. It seems to me that the first half of life is about building a strong ego: establishing who you are, defining your career, gathering a partner and friends to […]