Articles on Community
-
Spiritual Guidance as Love Activism
In the Northern Hemisphere where I live, we’ve passed the autumnal equinox and are entering one of my favorite seasons – fall. As the days become shorter and the nights lengthen, we’re invited to lean back and settle into this fecund, pregnant, obscure season heading towards winter. During fall our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate…
-
Prayers for Hope & Healing During an Election Year
“To reinvent your country you need a great deal of hope.”-Jurgen Moltmann Over the past year or so that I have been sharing the hosting of Shalem’s Prayers for Hope and Healing, I often reflect on the audacity of it all. A gathering of Shalem-inspired folk populating the assembled squares of a Zoom screen; thirty…
-
St. Clare of Assisi: Leading with Soul
St. Clare of Assisi (1194-1253), for centuries best known as St. Francis’ “little plant,” eventually emerged as a strong leader in her own right in thirteenth-century Italy and beyond. While St. Francis took center stage with his extroverted charismatic leadership, St. Clare quietly built stronger structures behind the scenes. As I muse on St. Clare…
-
Deepening Community
I recognized the growing niggles of anxiety that I had pushed to the furthest corner of my consciousness were growing more frequent. After several years of change and transition, bearing witness to individual and collective trauma and a growing concern for local and global justice – the dashboard of my life was full of flashing…
-
God Seeks Me, God is Seeking Me This Moment
Again and again, I am conscious that I am seeking God. There is ever present in me a searching, a longing for some ultimate resting place for my spirit—some final haven of refuge from storms and upheavals of life. I seek ever the kind of peace that can pervade my total life, finding its quiet…