Reviewing the last four weeks’ blogs on healing, the first thing I notice is that all different kinds of people need healing in the accounts of Jesus’ healings: yes, the blind, the deaf, and the lame, the poor and outcast, but also a synagogue leader, the son of a royal official, friends of Jesus and […]

Now the crowds were pressing up against Jesus as the word of his healing of Jarius’(a patron of the synagogue) daughter spread. There was a woman in the crowd who came up behind him and touched his cloak. She was immediately healed of the bleeding condition that had plagued her for twelve years. According to […]

This week we turn to the second category of the Jesus’ healings, the physical conditions that hamper our ability to move and see in the world and also to hear and to see and to understand what Jesus taught.  Jesus healed many blind people, deaf and deaf mutes, people who were paralyzed, one with a […]

       For quite some time I have been wondering, pondering what is it that Jesus heals in us. Oh, I know, demons and leprosy and fevers and bleeding in the Biblical stories, but what does that mean that he heals us? Here is the result of the research I have been doing in the Gospels […]

I am co-leading a Sunday School at my church on two contemporary figures, one Catholic—Fr. Richard Rohr(The Naked Now) and one protestant—Cynthia Bourgeault, an Anglican priest, (The Wisdom Jesus)who have had enormous influence on how I write about the Life of the Spirit. They both write and speak of non-dualistic thinking, beyond the either/or preferences […]

       “Follow me.” Jesus invites us into a full life, into a life led by God’s Spirit, back into the life we were created to lead, the life he modeled so beautifully. Twenty times in the four Gospels he extends us this invitation. Notice that the command is not “Believe in me.” It is to […]

Extend your hospitality to all people, all kinds. Welcome them as if they were your best friend, a beloved member of your family. Think of the Parable of the Prodigal Son[1] and the sayings of Jesus about how God sends his sun to shine on the evil and the good and his rain to fall […]

How do you get into the water? Dive in? Wade in until you’re ready to get all wet and then plunge? Stand at the edge and let the water lap up to your ankles? There are many different ways to test the waters. The issue with water is do you actually get in and swim? […]

As we grow into the relationship with Christ, Love’s light shines brightly in the bright and dark corners of our psyche, illuminating both our “good deeds” and our shadowy feelings about and actions towards other people. Our judgment, condemnation and fear of other people have to go, if we are ever to feel Love’s presence […]

       What deadens Christianity today is that we take the short cut to the life Jesus modeled. We try very hard to look like good people: we put on the cloak of humility or forgiveness or love on the outside, but our inner emotional states don’t match. Jesus taught an inner transformation that shone on […]