Articles on Prayer
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Learning to Love the Questions
It took me over a decade to discern that I wanted to be a priest. I was introduced to the Episcopal Church halfway through my studies in seminary, and I knew right away that I had found a spiritual home after a long sojourn of not being rooted in a religious tradition. As I regularly…
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Nurturing Spiritual Directors as Contemplative Leaders
On November 11, 2022, the Shalem Board approved Vision 2025: Our Ongoing Hope. The Vision offers six guiding principles for attending wholly to one’s spiritual practice while traveling through what might seem like the barren wilderness of ordinary life. As Director of Shalem’s Nurturing the Call: Spiritual Guidance Program, I find that the fifth guiding…
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Solitude’s Gift of Grace
Too often these days, I am overwhelmed with sadness and anger and a sense of not being enough. I think many of us struggle with this. It’s easy to feel this when we live in a world where so much is broken. Suffering and injustice surround us, and we feel powerless to change it. Communication…
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Befriending Good Friday Darkness
While staying alone at a friend’s woodland cabin one Good Friday night, I turned off the lights and stepped outside for a walk. My eyes needed a few minutes to adjust until silhouettes of bushes, trees, and clumps of weeds emerged from the blackness. Darkness changes even the familiar, and while I knew where the…
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Lenten Spiritual Direction with My Self
Almost every day, rising from sleepI so casually hop online, and I am startled awake again, alarmed.Ukraine. Iran. Myanmar. Tyre. Ethan. Madison. Xana. Kaylee. The Clancy children. Just the recent headlines.Their names and faces are countless, really.Abuse. Torture. War. Trauma. Sex-trafficking. Homicide. Betrayals of every stripe.It dawns on me- I’m in an actual horror movie.…