The kingdom is real and present in our lives, if we will rest in God; it is, in a way, a parallel universe to our “real” world; it operates under the rule of love; it is ever forming a true community where everyone is welcome; it is the world where the Holy Spirit reigns in […]

Any time we are aware of God’s presence, we step into the kingdom, even if only for a few seconds. When we can forget our false self’s needs, we are there. Being fully present to another person will take us there. The beauty of a sunset can transport us to the kingdom, as can any […]

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 […]

In… Out… In… Out… This time a deeper breath. In….. Out….. Deeper still. In: taking in the whole of the God’s Spirit—love, compassion, forgiveness, connectedness, grace, blessings. Out: giving back to the world—people, creatures, the created world—what you have taken in. Breathing in God’s Spirit, breathing out what we have been given. Breathe deeply into […]

I am sitting on the back porch this morning listening to the “clicks” of the cicadas’ song rising and falling in a sort of communal slow rhythm and to my neighbor’s water-feature gurgling. I could breathe to the cicada’s rhythm, meditate to its rising and falling just like my breath, now the volume grows, now […]

The Exodus story is so rich with symbolism for us that I am thinking about it again this week. As with the Hebrews God is calling us out of our stuck places so that we can follow him more freely and willingly. Pharoah and Egypt represent hardness of heart, imprisonment of body and mind, the […]

The riches of the Christian tradition are revealed often in the writings of the saints, for instance Catherine of Siena who lived in 14th C. Italy. Many of her letters exist to this day. A force of nature in her own day, she convinced Pope Gregory XI to return the papacy to Rome from Avignon […]

There are many paths into the Life of the Spirit: through Bible study and focus on God, through meditation or prayer,  to name a few, but to me one of the most powerful is gratitude. Gratitude is an acknowledgement of all we’ve been given by God: LIFE ITSELF! which is an incredible gift, talents and […]

When I was growing up in the forties and fifties, in the Christian church things were pretty much set in concrete. One was a Presbyterian(like my family) or Catholic or Methodist or Baptist or Episcopalian. We didn’t entertain other beliefs, we didn’t visit other churches, and certainly if we were Protestant, we would never enter […]

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 […]