Spirituality

"Dear Lord, thank you that you are Jehovah Shammah–"the Lord is there". (Ezekiel 48:35)

Formal Christian Prayer is a cornucopia of spirituality. Yet in the Roman Catholic tradition at least, two prayers stand out: Jesus' prayer, the Our Father, and the Hail Mary (Ave Maria).

"I long to see the nearing restoration..."

“This tiny prayer…is a cyber-wonks dream. The density of the information content is out of this world, quite literally!”

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“The eight beatitudes are a 'manifesto' for change, a change in the way we understand the world…behave in that world… (and) act toward one another.

“But deliver us from evil,” this last verse is the key to the entire prayer.

"Job was, you might say, trapped in a Porta Potty right there in the desert, despairingly dejected and despondent."

For a culture that values education, we seem to forget that our children need to be educated in the Word, not just the world.

"Finding footing in a world that appears to condone worshiping men can be incredibly hard, especially when that world extends past every aspect of your being."

"Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.”

"What really is going on at that moment, which so grips the artist’s imagination, moving him to bend every effort of will and skill to re-produce, under the sign of paint, the precise reaction of the shepherds on first seeing the Holy Infant? "

Maybe that’s what Judy Garland meant in “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” when she sang “we’ll have to muddle through somehow?”

"Are there things that are too precious to expose to real life? Things we’re afraid might get soiled? Maybe the most beautiful parts of ourselves? Maybe our faith?"

“But deliver us from evil,” this last verse is the key to entire prayer.

What scared me was that something I never thought was possible just might be.

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This nasty turn unnerved me, so I gathered myself together and drew a table with my comfortable beatitudes on one side and my uncomfortable ones on the other...

Is the Sermon ‘in the can’ after all?