Articles on Nature
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Five Gathered: A Reflection on Group Spiritual Direction
I had the bountiful blessing of making four very close friends this past week. It was not your typical friendship. Five individuals gathered together in faith, in silence, in prayer, and in profound empathy. The gathering was not by chance. No, something else, rather someone else, was at work — One I will call the…
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There is a Crack in Everything
Ring the bells that still can ringForget your perfect offering.There is a crack, a crack in everything.That’s how the light gets in. -Leonard Cohen These words are the refrain from Leonard Cohen’s famous song Anthem, published in 1992. I may be one of few people in my age range who does not remember this song…
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Impermanent Leadership
I recently spent several days at the beach. As I watched the waves come in and go out, I was reminded of the impermanence of all things. Mighty waves crash against the shore and immediately lose their form and power. Sand castles, carefully constructed, disappear in one crash of a wave. At the same time…
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Learning to See
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1: 5 This year I’ve had to replace my Advent wreath candles one by one as they spent themselves illuminating the darkness. Lit not only for dinner or in the evening, they have burned for long stretches of time at all…
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Inside the Ramparts: A Journey Inwards
We speed past green, rolling hills, pastures full of cows and sheep, and the red roofs of brick towns on the way to the Spanish city of Avila. The three hours on the train pass as quickly as the scenery due to my 85-year-old grandma and my excited conversation about the upcoming pilgrimage: our expectations,…
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Living with Joy: Spiritual Companions Across the Centuries
When I first encountered St. Francis of Assisi, I was struck by many similarities in our situations despite the 800 years separating us. He lived in a time of war, displacement of peoples, injustice, prejudice, religious strife, and illness, to name a few. Shaken to its core by political and religious conflict, his society had…