dreams on Mysticism

Following the biblical pattern, the church has always assumed that God can communicate spiritual truths to people through their imaginations, especially through dreams and visions. Church history is r...

Karl Barth wrote that, “God is always a mystery. Revelation is always revelation in the full sense of the word or it is not revelation” ( CD  I.8.2). God’s revelation, to Barth, always exists in a dia...

Our inclination is to reveal to God only what we feel comfortable in sharing. Naturally, we want to love and be loved by God, but we also want to keep a little corner of ourselves, where we can hide a...

Author and Episcopal priest Stephanie Spellers suggests that instead of imagining a kingdom, a better way for us to understand what Jesus had in mind when he spoke of this script, this new way of livi...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? A Gospel for a Jewish Community Matthew’s Gospel presents a favorable view of the Jewish Law and its traditions. In contrast to Luke...

The thrust of the parables is to subvert the distorted myths in which people live their lives. To understand what we mean by “living in a myth” just think of a couple of our own contemporary myths. Ta...

Pentecost is an invitation to dream. For when a community of faith quits dreaming dreams, it has little to offer either its members or the wider world. These dreams involve adopting a new perspective ...

AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? A Gospel for a Jewish Community Matthew’s Gospel presents a favorable view of the Jewish Law and its traditions. In...

Sometimes, of course, the sense of God with us becomes much more distinct. My oldest brother, J. I. Willard, served for over thirty years as a minister under the blessing of God. But his entry into th...

St. Martin of Tours was a Frankish soldier in the Roman army who abandoned his military post to follow Jesus at a time when Christianity had only begun to take root in France. He later became the bish...

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.

Martin of Tours became a great leader of the monastic movement in the West. In his early life, Martin was conscripted as a soldier in the Roman army. During this time, he became a catechumen (that is,...

I have come to see clearly that life is more than self. It is more than doing what I want, striving for what will benefit me, dreaming of all I can be. Life is all about my relationship with God. Ther...

One of the seductions that continues to bedevil Christian obedience is the construction of utopias, whether in fact or fantasy, ideal places where we can live the good and blessed and righteous life w...

Disturb us, O Lord, when We are too pleased with ourselves, When our dreams have come true Because we dreamed too little, When we arrived safely Because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, O...

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our ho...

Martin of Tours was a 4th century Frankish soldier who, after a personal encounter with Jesus, left the Roman army and became a hermetic monk and later a bishop. Dozens of stories of his life have cir...

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too pleased with ourselves; when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little; when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lo...

Sleep reminds us of our helplessness. Asleep, we have nothing to commend us; we accomplish nothing to put on our resume. Because of this, sleep is a counter-formative practice that reminds us that our...

Our culture is so fixated on dying and going to heaven when the whole Scripture is about heaven coming to earth.

Matthew 2:13–23 sits within Matthew’s infancy narrative (chapters 1–2), which serves as a theological introduction to Jesus’ identity and mission. Unlike Luke’s account, which emphasizes the humble bi...

Matthew 2:13–23 sits within Matthew’s infancy narrative (chapters 1–2), which serves as a theological introduction to Jesus’ identity and mission. Unlike Luke’s account, which emphasizes the humble bi...

Holy Comforter,  You are near when my dream dies.  You are near the brokenhearted.  Thanks be to you for a new dream and a future beyond my imagining. Maker of Miracle,  You are near when I cannot se...

The dream so profoundly called for by Martin Luther King Jr. was not the American dream but a longing for the kingdom of God.

Let the current of your being set towards God, then your life will be.

We care more for our possessions with which we hope to make our way in the world than with our thoughts and dreams which tell us who we are in the world.

When he was a young boy, twelfth-century church leader Bernard of Clairvaux fell asleep outside a church while waiting to go in for a Christmas Eve service. In his sleep he had a dream, a kind of visi...

The cost of redemption cannot be overstated. The wonders of grace cannot be overemphasized. Christ took the hell He didn't deserve so we could have the heaven we don't deserve.

I believe any dream worth birthing will require fierce labor to bring it forth. Some of those painful, spiritual contractions you’ve been feeling are not necessarily indicators that you are out of God...

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!