relationships and community on Healing

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.

I can’t help but recall here a scene from The West Wing. White House chief of staff Leo McGarry reaches out to his deputy, Josh Lyman, who is struggling with PTSD. Leo tells him a parable: This guy’...

Jesus Christ, the love that gives love, You are higher than the highest star; you are deeper than the deepest sea; You cherish us as your own family; You embrace us as your own spouse; You rule over u...

I have a photo of one of my children: on a day of pure sunshine, he is running down the hillside, leading with his chest, his smile and stride wide as his speed picks up. Running is pure delight. Agai...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we are not always able, willing, and ready to be vessels of your work. Thank you for the times that you cultivate our receptive hearts and fruitful hands. In your abun...

We bring before God those times when God’s Kingdom and love have not shaped our lives, asking to be forgiven and made new. Lord Jesus, too often this week you have only been a small part of our live...

In his excellent book, An Unhurried Life, Alan Fadling contrasts our overly busy lives with a vision of the kingdom from Isaiah chapter 61: Isaiah envisioned a kingdom in which those people in need ...

Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.

Leader: In Jesus Christ God has removed our sins from us and given us a new name. People: Now we are called Forgiven. Leader: In Jesus Christ God has assured us that he could never forget us. Peopl...

The vision that Jesus gives us is this: That I am unconditionally loved, that I belong to God, and that I am a person who can really trust that. When I meet another person who also is rooted in the he...

The needed change within us is God's work, not ours. The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside. We cannot attain or earn this righteousness of the kingdom of God: it i...

Gracious Father, too often we base our worth on our performance. We believe if we do well, your love grows, and if we falter, your love lessens. Our God, how far this is from the truth. We confess our...

When he said, “I am the bread of life,” he must have meant he was scattering bits of himself like a trail of crumbs leading us to speak and act and scatter forgiveness in his name to the ends of the e...

If we do anything to further the kingdom of God, we may expect to find what Christ found on that road - abuse, indifference, injustice, misunderstanding, trouble of some kind. Take it. Why not? To tha...

Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. He was made sweet to you because he liberated you. You had been bitter to yourself when you were occupied only with yourself. Drink the sweetness.

Gracious God, We build walls to protect ourselves, but it leads to isolation. We make independence the highest value, instead of complete dependence on You. Forgive us for our inability to surrender e...

This total self-giving, to which the Son and the Spirit respond by an equal self-giving, is a kind of “death,” a first, radical “kenosis,” as one might say. It is a kind of “super-death” that is a com...

The Spirit of truth has been given to a people who lacked truth. The Advocate has been sent. We who were once without life have been given new life. For it is by grace we have been saved through faith...

When one has once fully entered the realm of Love, the world—no matter how imperfect—becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for Love.

The Lord our God is rich in mercy, slow to anger, and abounds in steadfast love. He does not pay us back what we deserve, but even while we were his enemies he sent his son to die for us. Christ died ...

While exploring an experience of deep guilt and shame with her spiritual director, the author of Madeleine L’Engle, wrote One time I was talking to Canon Tallis, who is my spiritual director as we...

The ways Jesus goes about loving and saving the world are personal: nothing disembodied, nothing abstract, nothing impersonal. Incarnate, flesh and blood, relational, particular and local. The ways em...

To love means to open ourselves to suffering. Shall we shut our doors to love, then, and be “safe”?

Nevertheless, what was shameful, even odious, to the critics of Christ, was in the eyes of his followers most glorious. They had learnt that the servant was not greater than the master, and that for t...

Let this be thy whole Endeavour, this thy prayer, this thy desire, that thou mayest be stripped of all selfishness, and with entire simplicity follow Jesus only.

At a funeral Mass for a friend of Archbishop Romero who was murdered by the government because of her faith in Christ, Romero invited those present to follow this Lord who died, this God who sacrifice...

Faith and good works are both necessary. But one is the root and the other the fruit.

In this excerpt from Dr. John Townsend, the renowned psychologist and author, shares a story from his time in seminary, where one of his professors and mentor changes his mind regarding the importance...

Joy is a net of love in which you can catch souls.

After C. S. Lewis lost his wife Joy to cancer, he wrote these words about the inextricable link between love, suffering, and vulnerability: To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your...