Tag Archives: Henri Nouwen

Hispanic girl whispering secret in ear of friend

Cosmic Kindergarten: Watch Your Mouth!

Read the rest of the Via Positiva: Cosmic Kindergarten series Jubilee! Circle, Columbia, S.C. Readings for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost: The voice of my beloved! (Song of Solomon 2:8-13) All these evil things come from within. (Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23) Our first song this

Man holding bible

The Illusion of Certainty

“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1) Like many Christians, I have been curious and dismayed about what seems to be the increasing appeal of fundamentalism and fundamentalist thinking within

Glasses resting on Bible

Route Recalculation

Garden of Grace United Church of Christ, Columbia, S.C. Readings: Jonah 1:1-10, Matthew 6:25-33 Our grandson, Ayden, recently celebrated his first birthday. To join the celebration we had to make our way from Camden to Summerton where the other grandparents live. Now, at least one of us

Glasses resting on Bible

By Whose Definition?

Garden of Grace United Church of Christ, Columbia, S.C. Readings for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany: Jeremiah 17:5-10, Luke 6:17-26 Back in 1998, a well known politician made a bizarre statement. Now, I know that’s not anything unusual, and I would only have to look

Sunlight shining through leaf

I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal

I’m just an old chunk of coal, But I’m gonna be a diamond some day, I’m gonna grow and glow ’til I’m so blue pure perfect, I’m gonna put a smile on ev’rybody’s face. I’m gonna kneel and pray ev’ry day, Lest I should become

Dove flying in Lisbon, Portugal

The House

101 Charlie Smith Drive. It’s a beautiful, sprawling ranch style home nestled among the back-roads of rural southeastern Georgia. Its 3,000 square feet of open space are inviting. Ghostly aromas of cookies, chicken dinners and midnight snacks still haunt the now still, vacant air of

Holding hands

A Seal Upon My Heart

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If

Glasses resting on Bible

People Suck

Metropolitan Community Church of Columbia, S.C. Readings: 2 Samuel 11:2-5, Matthew 15:21-28, 1 Corinthians 13:9-13 I had been in seminary only a little while when my then-partner asked me a stumper of a question. “Don’t you think that’s a contradiction?” she asked me one day.

Rainbow over walkway

The Awakened Heart

“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