Forty years ago I left the Marriage Encounter weekend with two deep desires. The first desire was to grow my relationship with my wife. The weekend had taught me the need for communication to nourish our marriage and the techniques to do so. The second desire was to pursue a greater love of God, […]
Trust and Act
November 10, 2011 by
Our article, From Fear to Trust, described various ways of growing in the virtue of trust in God. The emphasis was on living the spiritual life passionately. However, we should not overlook the fact that we become ourselves through our actions. That is where our call to evangelization comes in—our call to bring the Christian […]
New Spiritual Landscape
November 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Our article, Holy Eros, proposed a whole new spirituality based on our understanding that eros is an intrinsic characteristic of human psychology and healthy spirituality. In doing so, the article was implicitly calling for a whole new spiritual landscape: With a new life vision. With a new mode of encountering God, others and created reality. […]
Holy Eros
November 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Could it be that the saints and mystics encountered Jesus as Eros? The Holy Spirit as Eros? God as Eros? The spiritual life as an erotic affair? I think so, despite the fact that the Church’s toxic spirituality had denigrated eros almost from its inception. What has been the effect of such negative spirituality? It […]
Personal Transformation
November 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment
In the early 1900’s, the psychologist William James wrote “Variety of Religious Experiences”, the classic study of everyday “mystical” experiences. He recounts the transforming moments in people’s lives when they discovered deeply the presence of the divine in their lives and the impact such peak experiences had on them. They were found to be a […]
From Fear to Trust
November 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment
The article, Life’s Growth Rhythm, highlighted the rhythm of invitation and yielding in all of life, including the spiritual life. A reader responded to this article in an email: “Before anyone will yield there must be trust.” A precious insight! Trust is the underlying disposition needed to yield. Therefore, our potential to grow depends on […]
Life’s Growth Rhythm
November 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment
There is a growth rhythm of invitation and yielding in all of life, including the spiritual life. Without realizing it, I experienced this growth rhythm many years ago on a dance floor at a Polish wedding. My secretary had invited me to her wedding. I was watching the intricate polkas being danced. I noticed only […]
Embracing the Embrace
November 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Often it is difficult to understand the full meaning of our deep spiritual experiences. Simply having such experiences doesn’t exhaust their meaning. We may even need an outsider to explain their significance to us. Such was my experience in discovering a fuller understanding of the practice of compassion. In the article, Spirituality of Compassion, I […]
Spirituality of Compassion
November 5, 2011 by
Some years ago I visited Paris. The highlight of this trip was a visit to the Louvre, the home of Leonardo de Vinci’s Mona Lisa and other masterpieces of art and sculpture. It was here that I discovered a whole new understanding of the word “compassion.” Most importantly, an understanding of its significance for the […]
Thinking Outside the Box
September 12, 2011 by
If we want to appreciate Christianity, if we want to deeply encounter Jesus, if we want to live a spiritual life, we must think outside the box. The box being our purely rational minds. In his book, The Naked Now, Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM explains that our minds can prevent us moving “from mere belief […]
