Every creature is a word of God. (Meister Eckhart) Like most American kids, I grew up with animals. We always had a cat or a dog or a hamster or other furry creature running through the house or safely tucked away in its cage. We
Living in the present: Only the present moment is real Only the present moment is real and available to us. The peace we desire is not in some distant future, but it is something we can realize in the present moment. (Thich Nhat Hahn, Interbeing:
“Then it suddenly struck me how much of my religious life had been centered on reading and writing about God, while very little of it had been spent waiting silently in God’s presence, and virtually none waiting silently with other people.” Diogenes Allen — Spiritual
“You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.” — Luke 15:16 “How do you know right from wrong?” the woman on the phone implored frantically. It was 1995 and I had answered the phone at the television station where I
…gratitude is a form of intercession. Only it must not be like the gratitude of the Pharisee, who condemned others and justified himself (cf. Luke 18:11). On the contrary, it must make one regard oneself as a greater debtor than all [others]; one gives thanks
“The difference between persons and groups of persons is not that some are victims and some are not: we are all victims and all dying from lack of compassion; we are all surrendering our humanity together.” (Matthew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness
For anyone who has read the gay and lesbian Christian message boards, particularly on Yahoo, you will notice that the fundamentalists who post all say the same things, make the same biblical arguments using the same threadbare six verses, and in the end, come to
“The most profound change that occurs in community, and the most simple, is learning the meaning of love.” — John J. McNeill, Taking a Chance on God The charred wood from the house stood out starkly against the pale, gray sky. Snow, fresh from the
“God Bless America!” I stared at the big block letters etched into the layers of grime, usually reserved for the mundane “wash me” message, on the back of a tractor-trailer I was following on the highway. Someone believed in those words so deeply that they
Taking the Bible seriously, but not literally There’s nothing quite like the topic of homosexuality to quickly spark a fiery storm of scriptural proof-texting. Both sides marshal all their scriptural evidence. The conservatives whip out their six “clobber” passages and bang them with a hysterical