Beyond Victimhood

When I choose to allow your behaviour to control my feelings, I give you enormous power in my life and make myself a victim.

Introduction To Centering Prayer

Yesterday Heather and I led an Introduction to Centering Prayer Workshop at St. Matthias Church.

How We Do Church #1

While a church will always, in some areas need to conduct itself in a businesslike manner, a church is not a business. A church is a body.

True Freedom

On March 15, 1939, when the Nazis marched into Prague, Jacob Edelstein and his fellow Zionist leaders had the opportunity to flee. But they chose to remain in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and work to support the remaining Jewish population.

Freedom

In her novel Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky tells the story of Maurice and Jeanne as they struggle to survive in the face of the Nazi occupation of Paris.

The Freedom of Dying

In the desert tradition of the Fourth Century CE that is the well-spring from which Christian monasticism sprang, the desert elders spoke often of death. They counseled their students that they should keep the hour of their death ever before their eyes.

Choice

Yesterday’s “Wrath of God” post generated an important response from Tress who says,

I am still wrestling with this matter of choice.

She goes on to explain,

My problem is with the millions of our fellow human beings who may have never experienced the joys of unselfishness, beauty and love in its fullest sense.

In what sense is it fair to say that people who have never known beauty and love and have been raised around selfishness, violence, and abuse, still have real choice about the lives they live?

The Freedom of Truth Telling – A Lesson From Herman Cain

It has been suggested that I should not take an interest in these things; but I find it hard not to be fascinated by the grand soap opera that is the train wreck of Herman Cain’s bid to become the Republican presidential nominee in the United States of Amercia.

“Poor Me” No Longer

It was one of those amazing Living Word of God moments. I had been nursing a peeve. My feelings had been hurt. I felt wrongfully accused, slandered by words I perceived to have portrayed me in a less than flattering light.

Let It Be

We have done it bundled up on a bitterly cold winter night. We have done it when the wind was blowing a gale. We have even done it as snow softly fell around our little shelter erected on the sidewalk. But this year it seemed that the torrential rain would drown our annual Saturday evening Christmas caroling visit to the small shopping village near the church.

Surely there would not be much of an audience to join us singing “Joy to the World,” as the rain soaked anyone foolish enough to venture outside on such a dark and stormy night.