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 […]
We have closed out the year 2010, a year of uncertainty and a small economic recovery; we enter 2011 with many questions about how our lives will be in the unknown and untested year ahead. Since the economic crash of 2008, we’ve lived with more uncertainty than in the previous 50 years. So often during […]
I have never seen a chickadee drag himself to the bird feeder, reluctant to take a kernel or two. I have never seen a cardinal fly listlessly from tree to tree. Or a junko not hop from place to place on the ground. Or a wren not look cute and perky. Or a nuthatch not […]
When we talk about loving God, being human means that we are never totally, 100% in the relationship. We dance close to the Father or to Christ and we pull away. Again and again we dance closer and we pull away. From our point of view we either experience God as being close to us […]
I wish I had a concordance for my own writing. So many times I would like to be able to look up a word and see what I’ve written about it previously. I am making a small step towards that end by organizing and renaming the blog files by topic. By doing this I have […]
It’s a subtle environment for the most part in the Savannah River Preserve. Oh, it has some obvious residents in the water fowl and the alligators that navigate the waters of the small lakes and the vultures that circle overhead. But, as a friend and I last week walked the levees that separate the lake […]
Continuing last week’s topic, Exodus being our story as well as part of the history of the Hebrews, I am writing this week about three ways I’ve been held captive in “Egypt” by powerful early influences in my life. The first and probably deepest capture of my mind started before my 2nd birthday when my […]
The Old Testament can be read as a history of the Jewish people and as a great description of human behavior on a metaphoric level. Take the Exodus story. Metaphorically, Egypt represents any place, culture or thought process that holds us captive and doesn’t allow us the freedom to let in new kinds of thinking […]
According to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary which has a branch in Charlotte, in 2008 there were 39,000 Christian denominations in the world with a new denomination forming every 12 hours. In 1800 there were 500 Christian denominations.[1] To me this is an astounding number. If someone had said that there were 500 today, I’d have been […]
Spirituality can be like going down a fairly straight ladder with your back to the rungs, or like facing the rungs and holding on as you descend. Spirituality, being led by the Spirit of God, and religion, a set of beliefs, rituals and a community drawn together by its commonality, form a continuum that depicts […]