Articles on Community
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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…
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Reflecting on Black Friday
Halloween was not over before I began receiving advertisements for “Black Friday” sales. They arrived daily – in email, social media feeds, and pop-up ads on web pages. Seemingly everyone was trying to get an early start on the biggest shopping day of the year. For some time, our “marketing-industrial” complex has placed a growing…
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Iona: A Touchstone to a Longer Horizon
The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh loved to tell a parable about a man and his horse. The horse is galloping quickly and everyone who sees the man fly by assumes that he is on a mission, going somewhere important. At some point a man standing along the road shouts at him, “Where are you…
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Stepping Out…to Step in More Deeply
Why does a person participate in a spiritual pilgrimage? Is it a desire for knowledge… or a vacation with friends? My heart has been drawn to pilgrimage for a long time. Choosing to travel for the purpose of drawing closer to God is quite different than being in a “tour group” or on a “vacation…