‘He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside of the camp.’ They would be outcasts, prohibited from the security and protection of the community. The command is from the reading in the Christian liturgy for the last Sunday before Lent. The book of Leviticus is proscribing treatment for the Israeli man or woman afflicted with […]
Why should I listen to you? “Why should I listen to you?” was a rhetorical question asked and answered a few decades ago when I decided to stop watching the news. Initially, my reason was a simple one. I lived alone with my first Doberman during the time of a series of home invasions in
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Discipline and habit equal happiness During an interview about the essentials of health and happiness, the reporter was surprised when I added work to my list. We were nearing the end of the time allotted for the interview, therefore I did not have time to elaborate about the many reasons I chose to add work to
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Of course we don’t need church to pray. ‘I pray while I am hiking’, ‘while walking in the forest’, ‘while fishing’; I have heard many statements like these, in the past I would nod somewhat uncomfortably; not infrequently, I felt the comments were said as if to ward off contagion from those of us who
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Christmas-What do we celebrate? An excerpt from a treatise against the heresy of Noetus by Saint Hippolytus was a reading in the Divine Office for December 23rd; a reminder of exactly what and why we celebrate during this Christmas season. The reading counters a prevailing belief of our modern culture: The early Christian Church suffered
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The Cosmic Christ “Doesn’t this make you feel like you’re about to explode?” My new Benedictine Oblate sculptor friend Jan Aiijan and I grinned at one another in recognition. On the heels of my enthusiastic yes to Jan’s first question, she asked “Have you heard the phrase ‘lucid intoxication’?” Once again, we smiled at one another
Communion in diversity Communion in diversity, legitimate diversity, is the phrase Pope Francis used in the Joint Declaration created by Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras at their joint meeting in Jerusalem last week, to describe the “unity to which only the Holy Spirit can lead us, that of communion in legitimate diversity,” reminiscent of John’s
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The affluent and homeless This is the land of beautiful people, perfect weather and stunning coastlines but in the marginal areas along the back, rarely traveled dirt paths to the stunning dunes of Oceano beach are the homeless: Skinny, filthy and hollering loudly at the rising sun, the guy was either stoned or psychotic, or
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I remember when camping meant a tent, sleeping bags, listening to the raccoons nimbly flip off the top of the metal garbage container and nights where the stars were so dense and the milky way created such a wide swath through the sky that most of the black night is obscured. That was camping. For
Leadership: wisdom of Edwin Friedman About ten years ago, I took the advice of an Episcopalian priest and read Edwin Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix; I was so intrigued by the content of this book that I bought several copies and sent them to friends. Recently, I
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