Emergency! Prayer, Paradox, and Matthew McConaughey “Who is your doctor?” The replies to my “I don’t have one” ranged from an incredulous, frustrated “Well, you’re sure going to have one now!” to “You remind me of my seventy-four-year-old Dad, he’s healthy as a horse and has never seen a doctor.” The absence of a doctor […]
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Humility Rules It was an Episcopalian priest’s sermon about humility that was the tipping point for my faith., more accurately, loss of it. Walking away from that sermon, all I could think was, “I don’t want to be humble but wise. I want wisdom!” Only to learn, far too many years later, it’s the prerequisite.
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Know thyself: gnōthi seauton: These two words were inscribed in the vestibule of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. They were the reason Socrates disputed the Oracle’s declaration that he was the wisest person on earth. When told what the Oracle had said, Socrates demurred, insisting that since he did not know himself, he could not
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On the Strange Symmetry of Beauty and Death By contemplating the beauty and use of each thing, [a man] is filled with love for the Creator. He surveys all visible things: the sky, the sun, moon, stars and clouds, rain, snow and hail … the four-legged animals, the wild beasts and animals and reptiles, all the
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By whose authority? Monday’s Gospel reading, and this phrase, “By whose authority?” remains in my mind days later. There’s a world hidden in that phrase. Jesus was approached in the Temple while he was teaching by the Elders and chief priests. When Jesus had come into the temple area,the chief priests and the elders of
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Wonder: It’s essential place in our hearts There was a time when I had this memorized, the words represented truth to my 20-something atheist’s heart, immersed and lost in the sea of the thoughts of others. Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving
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The shaking reality of Advent Amidst the Hallmark Christmas movies, red bows, tinsel, parties, Christmas music and ubiquitous political clamor, lurks a presence. A whisper deep in our hearts, in our psyches and in our souls. The phrase “the shaking reality of Advent” is not mine, but belongs to Jesuit Priest and martyr, Alfred Delp.
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Image Maura Harrison’s An Illustrated Comedy, Inferno Canto 1. In the middle of the journey of our life, November’s the month of the dead “I continue to think that we start from very different places on the question of death itself, what it is and what, if anything comes after it…I have trouble getting myself
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Pope John Paul In Arguing With the Pope, journalist Barbara Harrison wrote about Pope John Paul’s trip to Denver in August of 1993. He was there because it was the eighth World Youth Day. I remember little more than my complete sense of bafflement as I read her piece. How could this man evoke the thunderous adulation and
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In the Belly of the Whale: Jonah, The Reluctant Prophet. We’ve all been there. Alone. In the dark. Terrified. In the belly of the whale: Jonah, the reluctant prophet. Just four chapters long, the book of Jonah seems at first to be just another fantastic Bible story. Surely a wild tale, of course it’s allegory, right? And
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