An image and memory from a recent walk, a poem of reflection and shadow for a mid-winter day... Walking through the woods near the lake at the end of a warm winter’s day the sun so near the horizon that it sends its golden carpet unfurling recklessly across the earth, I catch myself walking beside me. …
Tag: Prayer
I am very pleased to announce my first-ever retreat on the intersection of spirituality and creativity. If you live near the St. Louis area, think about joining me on Friday evening, October 11, and all day Saturday the 12th at Mercy Center to explore what happens at that very special place where God, prayer and our own creative activities meet. …
We’re all hiding something inside, and we’re all making a mess of it from time to time. We’re multilayered people, all of us, onions (to shift the food metaphor) that need to be peeled away if we’re ever going to get at our centers. …
Along comes St. Augustine, reminding us that he found God not in some eye-widening sunset, not in some breathtaking act of charity, not in some simple moment of prayer, kneeling in his cell or chapel, although certainly he must have found God in those places and moments, just like the rest of us. He found God — and was “dazzled” by God — in his deepest wound. …
Almost a year ago (March 31, 2018) I posted a reflection about “waiting” during Holy Week, and that post included a new song I composed and performed with my to musical partners, John Caravelli and Phil Cooper. A year later, we now have a video to go with the song, so I thought I would post it here. Sit with it, pray with it, let it be a reminder that God is present throughout all of our days and nights… …
He was walking through the autumn-thinned woods, a carpet of fallen yellow beneath his feet. He put one foot in front of the other, the walk more of an obligation to himself than anything else. Sometimes, he thought, he prayed while he walked, but today he could not gather the will. The woods were silent and empty, as was he. …
Beauty, as the English poet David Whyte writes above, is the “harvest of presence,” it is the reward for sitting still and waiting for something to show up, of being so present in a moment that a finch is not just a finch but a reminder that God is at work in the world. …
Pondering, at least it seems for me, is a most appropriate approach and primer to a life of prayer. When we can arise each morning and listen for the sound of our favorite bird and then connect it to the movement of God in our lives, we are certainly on to something mystical and yet very real. …
The power of Easter Saturday is that it teaches us to wait and watch, to sit quietly and contemplate what it all means and how it will change our lives. This post includes a brand-new song that encourages us to do just that, I hope, written just a few weeks ago with my friends John Caravelli and Phil Cooper. John brought the song to us nearly complete and together we all made it into something new. That’s what happens when …
From time to time, as both a writer and a spiritual director, I get asked for book recommendations. So on this cold and snowy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday in the U.S., I stayed inside and scoured my shelves for ten books I would highly recommend, books that are both well-read and well-loved, books that have pointed me in different ways to the movement of God in my life, inspired me by their beauty and story, or have somehow …