Healing Trauma

Sep 30, 2019

    In August of this year I heard Father Gregory Boyle speak in Charlotte about his work with gang members in East Los Angeles. For 35 years he has invited young men and women out of gangs into Homeboy and Homegirl Industries. He has written two books about his work, Tattoos on the Heart […]

Goodness, Kindness and Gentleness

Jul 15, 2019

  These three qualities: goodness, kindness and gentleness express love, patience, peace, joy, faithfulness and self-control, the other qualities of the fruit of the Spirit to a T.[1] But are we Christians known by our goodness, kindness and gentleness? What do those qualities have to do with spreading His word, with serving His people? And […]

It is so hard to feel God’s love!

Jul 08, 2019

Last week I wrote about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly and without our parents’ and our culture’s overlay. This week’s post is about how hard it is to feel, to accept God’s love for us in every cell in our body. We can “know” in our minds that God loves us and […]

A Vessel of God’s Light and Love

Apr 29, 2019

A vessel, a conduit, a carrier, a container, a receptacle —-I’m not sure what the right word is to express how we might reveal God’s light and love in this world and in us though the Indwelling Spirit of God. But it certainly wouldn’t be me doing any of it. I’d have to get out […]

Accepting and Living In God’s Love

Apr 15, 2019

    I am convinced that the hardest thing for us to do in the spiritual life, the life lived in the mind of Christ is this: to accept God’s love and forgiveness and to feel loved and forgiven in every cell and bone of our body. Our own self-concept and the world’s ways of […]

From Judging to Loving

Apr 01, 2019

  If we meet a person and judge their lives by what we see on the surface—how they dress or look, or what they have done, we are not loving him or her.  If we don’t get to know their story and why they are the way they are, then we are not open to […]

The Prodigal Son and His Brother

Mar 04, 2019

There are two sons in the Parable of the Prodigal or Lost Son in Luke 15, but we often just focus on the errant one. He is the one who asked for his inheritance and then went off and lived a fun life and spent/lost all his inheritance. He was brought to his knees by […]

The Ten Commandments

Sep 17, 2018

I been thinking a lot lately about the 10 Commandments and what they require of us. The impact of the Exodus story on my life continues now more than a year after I finished the book on Exodus.   I’ve come to two conclusions about the commandments. First, that, if we follow the first four […]

Appreciation and Love

Jul 23, 2018

“I love everyone, but I don’t have to like them,” I overheard these words of a fellow member of a church I belonged to a few years ago. I was shocked! How can we love someone without liking them? We use the word love so much, and liking, too, that I think we skip over […]

Blessed Are The Pure In Heart…

Jun 25, 2018

  “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Purity is holiness, untainted by any human impulse, unblemished by sin.  Jesus is talking about the releasing of all that stands between us and God in this Beatitude. And when we have released all that separates us from God, we will see God.[1] […]