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 […]

An article by Cindy Brandt[1] that I read a few weeks ago reminded me that when Jesus called his disciples, he said to them, “come and see.” He invited them to experience what he was offering. He held out a promise, a potential that they could taste and feel. And, obviously, when they did “come […]

You may have noticed in my writings that I seldom talk about beliefs, even though I am a Christian. What I write about is the relationship with God, about how do you, how do I, translate our beliefs into a life that echoes Jesus’ relationship with his Abba, the closeness of that relationship? I am […]

  Our souls are the gold, pure and simple, of our selves and the pathway to the truest part of ourselves, the created self. Do you know that only about 20% of the gold on earth has been mined? Most of the rest lies in the earth’s core. [http://facts.randomhistory.com/2009/03/09_gold.html 5/26/14] Like gold, our souls need […]

Each person has an inner lens through which s/he views the world. The lens can be clouded with prejudices, assumptions, preferences, self-serving attitudes or it can be clearer, able to see reality more truthfully. The source of these things that can cloud our vision of reality can be our religion, our culture and even the […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be in this world, but not of the world.[John 17:14-19] And I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what that would mean to you or me. First, let’s talk about what it doesn’t mean: 1. What it is not about is us being above […]

As we in the Christian church regroup in an era where the church has lost much of its authority in our country, I think we need to look deeply within for why we have turned so many people off in the last forty years. From the scandals of the Catholic priests to the Protestant politicians […]

If there is one thing that is deeply embedded in the American psyche it is this: I alone am responsible for my life. I have to make it happen—whatever the “it” is. I am on my own in this thing called life. Even within the context of family and partnerships we can feel totally alone […]

How might we summarize Jesus’ teachings and the life he modeled? We need a guide, a condensed version, a rule to compare ourselves to, a standard. Jesus said so many things, but he saw them all as fulfilling the law of the Old Testament which is about love. So in this essay I will endeavor […]

“Imaginary friend in the sky. Delusional. Sad,” commented one of my Facebook readers recently on a day I was writing about surrendering to God. What he wrote caused me to think about how I would describe God. The picture of God he painted is the one I had as a child: an angry God, a […]