I recently finished reading The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, by Belden Lane. It’s an exploration of “desert” and “mountain” spirituality in the church fathers, combined with personal reflections from visits to monasteries around the world, and his own mother’s slow journey toward death.
[Read more…] about Attentiveness and Indifference: Curated Links Sept 4, 2020
“Normal” church life has been disrupted by the pandemic, which has given many people an unexpected opportunity to rethink what worship is, and what it’s for.
[Read more…] about Imitate What You Receive: Curated Links Aug 28, 2020Last Sunday the church I co-pastor with Matt had its first in-person worship gathering in 23 weeks (outdoors, face masks, social distanced, the whole 9 yards). But my family and I had to stay home because of a slight possibility we’d been exposed to Covid (we hadn’t, everyone’s fine).
[Read more…] about Gathering the Body: Curated Links August 21, 2020
A couple weeks ago my bishop told me to make sure my spiritual disciplines were truly helping me connect with God and find spiritual rejuvenation. “We’re only in the first quarter of the game,” he said, “and we need to last the whole game, all four quarters.”
[Read more…] about Staying Sane: Curated Links August 14, 2020
My kids started school online yesterday. They’ll be online at least until Labor Day. As this pandemic drags on, and our world seems to be coming unhinged, these words from Dame Julian of Norwich brought some comfort for me the other day (she talks often of Jesus as our “Mother,” FYI):
We make our humble complaint to our beloved Mother, and he sprinkles us with his precious blood, and makes our soul pliable and tender, and restores us to our full beauty in course of time… And then the true meaning of those lovely words will be made known to us, ‘It is all going to be all right. You will see for yourself that everything is going to be all right.’
Dame Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
[Read more…] about Our Humble Complaint: Curated Links August 7, 2020
Happy Friday, y’all! I am writing to you fresh off two weeks of vacation! It was a rejuvenating time.
One of the major shifts that took place for me on this vacation was my mind got “unhooked” from social media. Before this vacation, with the pandemic and the protests, I was noticing that my mind would anxiously drift toward wanting to “check and see what’s happening right now” in an effort to figure out what to do and how to lead.
[Read more…] about Unhooking From the Social Media Drip: Curated Links July 24, 2020
