What is your state of being? Are you anxious? Worried? Angry? Upset? With what are you preoccupied? What haven’t you got that you think you need? Or are you living in peace? Finding joy in your life? Fulfilled? Trusting? Asking about the state of being of someone, their own interior experience, is like giving them […]

A contemplative life is not as we might imagine it—dull with nothing to do but ponder and reflect. What the word contemplative usually conjures up for us is someone, probably a cloistered monk or nun—who has nothing to do all day long except think about God. There actually are contemplative orders of religious people that […]

“Martha, Martha …there is need of only one thing.” [NSRV Luke 10:41] Poor, maligned Martha who is stressed and worried, frustrated that her sister is listening to Jesus and not helping Martha in the kitchen with the meal. The version of this story that echoes in my head is the KJV: “but one thing is […]

Surrendered. Embracing. Peaceful. Calm. Centered. I first encountered some women who radiated these qualities in 1998 when I entered a training program for spiritual directors at the Mercy Center in Burlingame, California. I’ve met a number of Sisters of Mercy since then and most all of them emanated these same qualities. The essential quality is […]

         “Thy kingdom come!” Do we know what this proclamation means? What does the kingdom mean to us? Is it in some distant second coming? Or is it in the here and now? Jesus taught about the kingdom frequently. It seems to me that he came to teach us how to live, how to […]

The kingdom is a state of heart and mind, not a place. It is embedded in the connective tissue of the universe which is Christ; it is love, as in God is love, that binds us all together. Whoever carries the kingdom in their heart and mind brings it wherever they go. The kingdom is […]

There are activist churches and spiritual churches, activist Christians and spiritual Christians, activist sometimes to the exclusion of the spiritual or spiritual to the exclusion of any action. I think we misunderstand faith when we specialize in one or the other. Faith is belief in action. Faith is a dynamic state which seeks to include, […]

As I look at how we Americans live in the 21st century, I am not sure that we have any idea of why we are here, what our lives are to be, of who we are to become in the larger sense. We seem to live in two worlds, our own selves and in the […]

I only know what I have lived. Anything else, beliefs, creeds, thoughts, proposals, talk– is just talk. If I haven’t lived it, it’s just theory. Theory is just a way of positing what I think is true, but until I really test it out in the laboratory of my life, it remains a theory, something […]

This I know for sure about the rule/reign/kingdom of God: we are in it, under it—always. God is working in our lives—always. We are connected to God—always. Through God we are connected to all people and all life—always. God loves us—always. God forgives us–always. God welcomes us back—always. And we have little awareness of these […]