The 13th Century Persian poet and Sufi mystic, Rumi, once said that this is how faith moves in our lives: We live with a deep secret that sometimes we know, then not, and then know again. New York columnist David Brooks says something quite similar. In his book, The Second Mountain, he shares how he…
In a 1990s movie, City Slickers, there’s a scene that sheds light on the importance of private integrity. Three men, New Yorkers, close friends, have gone off together for a summer to ride on a cattle drive in the hope that this experience will help them sort through their respective mid-life issues. There is no…
When Jesus instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper, he held up bread and wine as two elements within which to make himself especially present to us. Since that time, now more than 2,000 years ago, Christians celebrating the Eucharist have used the same two things, bread and wine, to ask Christ to bless this…
For too many years, for me, Christ was simply Jesus’ last name: Jack Smith, Susan Parker, Jesus Christ. Intellectually, I knew better; but practically, both in my private faith and as a theologian, I functioned as if Christ were simply Jesus’ surname. Whether in prayer, writing or preaching, I almost always used the two names…
Scripture tells us that in this life we have no lasting city. True enough. But, it seems, we also don’t have a lasting house, school, neighbourhood, town, zip code address or most anything else. Eventually nothing lasts. Perhaps my case isn’t typical, but a lot of things in my life haven’t lasted. My grandparents were…
www.ronrolheiser.com More than 50 years ago Philip Rieff wrote a book entitled The Triumph of the Therapeutic. In it, he argued that widespread reliance upon private therapy today arose in the secularised world largely because community has broken down. In societies where there are strong families and strong communities, he contends, there is less need…
A Generation ago, JD Salinger wrote a novel, The Catcher in the Rye, which became immensely popular, as well as becoming required reading in most undergraduate literature programmes. It deserved both. It’s a great piece of literature.Here’s the image: A man is watching children playing in a rye field with an exuberance and delight that…
Elizabeth Poreba ends a poem, No Good Company, with these words: I’ve got no banter, I’m all judgement and edges, an edgy white lady Wondering what to do, what to do next As in Jesus is coming, look busy. At the wedding feast in Cana, Mary tells Jesus, they have no wine, asking him to…
Although not too many people might recognise this, the #MeToo movement is, in essence, a strong advocate for chastity. If chastity can be defined as standing before another with reverence, respect, and patience, then most everything about the #MeToo movement speaks explicitly of the non-negotiable importance of chastity and implicitly for what our sexuality is…
In a poem entitled, Is/Not, Margaret Atwood suggests that when a love grows numb, this is where we find ourselves: We’re stuck here on this side of the border in this country of thumbed streets and stale buildings where there is nothing spectacular to see and the weather is ordinary where love…