life on planet earth on Having it All-Together

One Ash Wednesday a decade ago, when I was new to Anglicanism, I knelt at a rail as Fr. Thomas, my priest, smeared a black cross on each forehead. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall ret...

I became interested in the subject of transition outer changes around 1970 when I was going through some difficult inner and outer changes. Although I gave up my teaching career because of those chang...

Eventually all things fall into place. Until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moments, and know EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON.

Wholeness is brokenness owned and thereby healed.

I want the whole Christ for my Savior, the whole Bible for my book, the whole Church for my fellowship and the whole world for my mission field.

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.

In this excerpt, musician and author Ginny Owens shares a childhood exercise that only makes specific what all of us as human beings struggle with, the desire for wholeness: I wish you could know my ...

My temptation is to tackle everything at once, or nothing at all.

Like me, you may struggle deeply with what it means to live well. We are all seeking to take these scattered moments of meaning and weave them together into a beautiful whole.

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassin...

Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.

You've got to admit you're broken before you can be made whole.

All His is mine and all mine—my sins, my death, my damnation—is His.

For all our time and attention, no matter how carefully we curate our stuff or how much we might enjoy ourselves along the way, we’re all merely stocking and staging someone else’s opportunity for bar...

If ever there were a true "just as I am" church, if ever there were a community where everybody could bring all their baggage and brokenness with them without neat and tidy happy endings qui...

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

Presence is experienced as a unitary whole. Think, for example, about the experience of sitting on the top of a hill, far from the polluting lights of a city, gazing at a dark, starry sky. Unless you ...

In Essentials Unity; In Non-Essentials Liberty; In All Things Charity

As the broken bread, once scattered upon the mountains, has been gathered together and made one, so may your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into one kingdom; To God be the gl...

We all want to feel like we come together as equals, with each of us bringing something unique and vital to the table. That’s how friendship works: we join forces, knowing each of us has something to ...

Nothing can stand against You Nothing No sin, no death No prejudice, no division Nothing can stand against our God You’re making us whole and holy in your mercy and grace Standing together in truth an...

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

To be is to be in place.

The essence of building is letting dwell.

The present moment (‘whenever’) somehow holds together the one-off past event (‘the Lord’s death’) and the great future when God’s world will be remade under Jesus’ loving rule (‘until he comes’).

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have all one needs.

"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timel...

I remember playing a game as a child in which we would bend one knee and grab our foot behind us and then try to race—limping, stumbling and falling over as we struggled across the grass toward a fini...

All joy emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of t...