practices on Corruption

Whenever there is a separation between values and practice, things break down. In ancient China, the people desired security from the barbaric, invading hordes to the north. To get this protection, th...

When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become l...

The first step in backsliding is to put one's service for Christ ahead of one's love for Christ.

“Spirituality” wrongly understood or pursued is a major source of human misery and rebellion against God.

The defining ingredient of real human life is fidelity. It’s not wealth, power, control, or knowledge. It’s fidelity, the question of practice—how do we maintain fidelity [with God]?

It’s what you practice in private that you will be rewarded for in public.

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is th...

They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you that practice makes perfect. I wish they’d make up their minds.

There once was a popular shaman in India whom people would seek out for advice. People would stand in line for hours, waiting to hear the choices they should make in their lives or the changes that wo...

There once was a town high in the Alps that straddled the banks of a beautiful stream. The stream was fed by springs that were old as the earth and deep as the sea.  The water was clear like crysta...

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.

The modern way with God is to set him at a distance, if not to deny him altogether; and the irony is that modern Christians, preoccupied with maintaining religious practices in an irreligious world, h...

As sensitive and broad-minded humans, we must never allow ourselves to be in any way judgmental of the religious practices of other people, even when these people clearly are raving space loons.

Adoption … is not the cause merely of a partial salvation, but bestows salvation entire…

Our mistake is to think that following Jesus consists in loving our enemies, going the ‘second mile,’ turning the other cheek, suffering patiently and hopefully—while living the rest of our lives just...

Rituals are procedures or routines that are fused with meaning. Ritual actions include various rites of passage (birth, marriage, death) or calendrical rites (religious holy days, national holidays), ...

Souls are like athletes that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers.

Most pastors carry hurt from ministry—words that landed wrong, criticism that cut deep, the weight of unmet expectations—not to mention just the ordinary hurts everyone acquires from living in a sinfu...

A Story from the Philokalia A story is told in  The Philokalia  about a young monk who went to an older monk to confess a struggle. The older monk was appalled, telling the young monk that his strugg...

To experience the richness of life in God's kingdom, we must reorder our lives. We need to see through the shallow promises of our culture, and we need rhythms, signposts, and practices that reori...

Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.

The eight laws of learning are explanation, demonstration, imitation, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition.

Keep practicing until it lives inside you; then it will seem foolishly easy to the unpracticed.

There is a time to go and do; there is a time to listen and reflect. Knowing which is a matter of spiritual discernment. If we were to ask Jesus which example applies to us, the Samaritan or Mary, his...

Spiritual practices don’t justify us. They don’t save us. Rather, they refine our Christianity; they make the inheritance Christ gives us on the Cross more fully our own.

We must offer all our acts to God and believe that He accepts them. Then hold firmly to that position and keep insisting that every act of every hour of the day and night be included in the transactio...

To follow Jesus implies that we enter into a way of life that is given character and shape and direction by the one who calls us. To follow Jesus means picking up rhythms and ways of doing things that...

About 2 out of 3 American adults who regularly attend church or other religious services say they go for their kids.

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.

I personally get some inspiration for getting at the nature of this work from a story told by one of my favorite spiritual writers, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Thérèse was born in 1873, to a devout Cath...