relationships and community on Awareness

I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike and Claudia, who had recently returned from Malawi, a small country in southeastern Africa. We were sitting in a booth at one of those chai...

My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.

To observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

But it is important to be aware that the act of judging others has its origins in our self-judgment. As I often tell patients, “Shamed people shame people.” Long before we are criticizing others, the ...

One of the reasons I love a good invitation is that I get tired of being told what to do. As the very responsible oldest daughter of a pastor and someone who entered vocational ministry at a young age...

We confess our sins to you, today, O Lord. We confess that we sometimes find it difficult to believe that you are actually involved in our day-to-day experiences, that you actually impact our circumst...

Picture this: you are just about a year into your first call as a minister. Everything seems to be going swimmingly. You caught up with a seminary friend over the weekend and you slightly brag about h...

As we become more intentional about living according to our deepest desires, it becomes increasingly important to notice the effects of technology on our mind, our soul and our relationships.  The ...

Leader and people: Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we your unworthy servants, give you humble thanks for all your goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all whom you have made. We bless you ...

Prepare my heart Lord as I come before You today and I pray that You would give me a spirit of wisdom and understanding. Lord I pray for illumination of Your Word and that You would open my eyes to th...

Leader: The good news in Christ is that when we face ourselves and God with the awareness of our need, we are given grace to grow, and courage to continue the journey. Friends, believe the good news o...

Even though Carl Jung first introduced the terms introvert and extravert back in 1921 (in his now-classic volume Psychological Types), the concepts—especially introversion—crashed into the public’s co...

It is important to be aware that the act of judging others has its origins in our self-judgment. As I often tell patients, “Shamed people shame people.” Long before we are criticizing others, the sour...

If you’ve ever wondered what the explicit goals are of the Klu Klux Klan, here is a definition offered by the organization itself: The goal of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux ...

It is nothing, then, that we can produce; it is nothing that we can do in ourselves. It is just this tremendous awareness of our utter nothingness as we come face-to-face with God.

On a warm summer night, I drove my son to a local cemetery. It was a Moravian cemetery that sits nestled on a hill overlooking a flowing creek. My son, a typical teenager in many ways—Xbox, iPhone, ho...

Part of our experience of waiting is cultural, and how time elapses while we wait can vary from person to person and context to context. We wait differently and we have different expectations that are...

Joseph Lister was a British surgeon and the founder of anti-septic medicine. That may sound incredibly boring, but the effects of his discovery were profound. Prior to Lister, surgeons had virtually n...

One of the challenges, at least in the western church, is an inability to deal with our wounds in a healthy way. Our training as Christians has been focused on Bible studies, small groups, and Sunday ...

We spend the whole of our whole lives watching ourselves. But when a man becomes meek he has finished/

Love . . . is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

One of the dangers of living in a constant state of distraction is that we never go to the bottom of our pain, our sadness, our emptiness, which means we never find that rock-bottom place of the peace...

Since her first grief had brought her fully to birth and wakefulness in this world, an unstinting compassion had moved in her, like a live stream flowing deep underground, by which she knew herself an...

It is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

The God who loans you life sees your every move, hears each word you speak, knows your every thought. You are seen by God. Noticed. Known.

In normal life one is not at all aware that we always receive infinitely more than we give, and that gratitude is what enriches life. One easily overestimates the importance of one’s own acts and deed...

The True Self is all about right relationship, not requirements. It’s not about being correct; it’s about being connected, which you always were—you just didn’t realize it.

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.

[Paying attention to those suffering most in a community] is a fundamental and paradoxical principle that goes to the heart of the gospel and the nature of eschatological existence.

I found that keeping company with poets, men and women who care about words and are honest with them, who respect and honor their sheer overwhelming power, kept me alert—biblically alert, Jesus alert.