Our ability to be both truly present to one another and aware of God’s presence in our lives is a gift unto itself. It is our calling. There’s nothing more important we can do today.
We all need a place to pray with others who share our faith or just to be alone with our thoughts and our God. Washington, D.C. has many such places for believers of every kind. And with the weight of the nation and the world on the shoulders of so many of these men and women, it’s a good thing.
Whether I have been healed by God through the power of prayer or through the natural reactions of my God-gifted body, I am – for now anyway – healed. Whatever the outcome, I have been healed, for I am at peace. So for me the question remains the one posed at the top of this reflection by the great New England naturalist poet Mary Oliver, as it is should for everyone, regardless of health or healing: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Out on the beach today, I saw an old guy sitting in a wheelchair, staring out at the surging ocean. The waves off Daytona Beach were crashing loudly just 50 feet out, but by the time they reached the wheels of his chair they were just harmless bubbles and foam. He sat there for some [...]
For how sad it is that any of us might not do what we seem called to do, that we might live our lives never embracing the small voice inside us that says, “teach” or “sing” or “nurse” or “own a business” or “be of service…”
If we live our lives well (at least this is the way I define “well”) then we live not in numbness and lethargy and apathy, but fully alive and feeling, aware of the sacred around us, and with an ongoing commitment to living an examined life — one centered on the presence of God, the teachings of Christ, and the power of the individual to change the world in some way, however small.
Tollers’ eyes opened wide when he heard the words. He smiled a knowing smile for just an instant before lowering his head into his hands. His tears flowed freely and painfully and overwhelmingly like a cleansing, purifying flood, like a baptism of fire and rain, and for the first time in nearly a decade he knew he had found what he had been looking for.
The point is this: We don’t really own the land. We are given the blessing of calling bits and pieces of it “home” for a while, but it belongs to the creator and to the lives of all who have touched it and worked it and walked it over the years.
As a writer, I am reminded of something I once heard the late Frank McCourt say at a lecture about writing “Angela’s Ashes”: “Nothing is significant until you make it significant.”
Here’s a truth we Christians need to hear: For many non-Christians, one of the biggest obstacles to becoming believers is not theological. The obstacle is not an inability to comprehend or believe the Christian salvation story. The biggest blockage in their path to faith is how they see the Christians around them acting. For we can be our own worst witnesses of faith.