rest on wilderness

Ron Roheiser points out three images for retreat used in Scripture that meet us in our yearning; all of them apply in different ways at different times.  ● There is the lonely place to which Jesus ...

The green oasis, the little grassy meadow in the wilderness, where, after the week-day’s journey, the pilgrim halts for refreshment and repose.

God our Father, Lord our Shepherd, Spirit of the Living God, One in Three … and Three in One: We praise You our Creator, Savior, and Provider. By Your grace, we lack nothing. You feed us in body...

Context Mark 6 began with Jesus being rejected in his hometown and sending the Twelve on a ‘mission trip.’ At the high point of the disciples’ success, Mark interrupts his narrative to relay the deat...

Context Mark 6 began with Jesus being rejected in his hometown and sending the Twelve on a ‘mission trip.’ At the high point of the disciples’ success, Mark interrupts his narrative to relay the deat...

In the desert outside of Tucson, scientists dreamed up an experiment to re-create the conditions of earth for space, when and if the earth could not be made great again. The biosphere was a little wor...

On retreat we stop avoiding the pain of the disconnect between our deepest desires and the way we are actually living. We have time and space to reflect on our life rhythms to see if they are really w...

Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.

Sabbath honors the necessary wisdom of dormancy. If certain plant species, for example, do not lie dormant for winter, they will not bear fruit in the spring. If this continues for more than a season,...

The antidote to exhaustion is not rest but wholeheartedness.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of ...

When we hear the word retreat many of us think of the military use of the word, which refers to the tactic troops use when they are losing too much ground, when they are tired and ineffective, a...

Rest is a matter of wisdom, not law.

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...

Leader: The Lord is our shepherd. People: All our needs will be met. God provides a place and time for deep rest and restoration. God leads us beside still waters; restores our souls and leads us in...

A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like a summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the joyous day of the whole week.

Leisure . . . is an essential part of Benedictine spirituality. It is not laziness and it is not selfishness. It has something to do with depth and breadth, length and quality of life.

The other afternoon, in an effort to avoid doing my work, I picked up Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. It turned out to be a fitting choice, as Thoreau has quite a bit to say about wasting time. “The cos...

We aren’t rest-filled people who occasionally become restless; we’re restless people who sometimes find rest.

We’re little children wandering the aisles of the internet because we’ve lost the presence of our loving parent. We are desperate for the attention of a good Father who sees us. We have no idea how to...

The seed of God's Word won't grow to fruitfulness without pruning for rest, quiet, and calm.

Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest

Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul.

Our Sabbath project grew out of a desire to reclaim some of the unhurried wonder of those early days of parenthood—to see what would happen if, on one day out of seven, we stopped working, striving, a...

We know we need rest, but we can no longer see the value of rest as an end in itself; it is only worthwhile if it helps us recharge our batteries.

...work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental...

In her book Invitation to Retreat , Ruth Haley Barton shares some of the many insights she has had since she began intentionally taking intentional retreats to re-connect with God and her own des...

Sadly, the need for recovery is often viewed as evidence of weakness rather than an integral aspect of sustained performance. The result is what we give almost no attention to renewing and expanding o...

Extravagant wastefulness in time might prove the most productive thing you choose for yourself.

May God bless you with the ability to recognize that the world is not yours to save. May the Spirit awaken you to the beautiful truth that you have a part to play.  May your eyes see resurrection in ...