‘The book you need to read finds you, and finds you at that time in your life when you need to read it’. I believe that old axiom, and offer it here as an apologia for my selection of books for 2022. Good art and good literature always have an objective element to them, a…
Swiss theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, once wrote: “After a mother has smiled for a long time at her child, the child will begin to smile back; she has awakened love in its heart, and in awakening love in its heart, she awakes recognition as well…In the same way, God explains himself before us as…
I did my doctoral thesis on the classical, philosophical proofs for the existence of God. The concept had always intrigued me: ‘Can you prove that God exists?’ After researching the thought of Aquinas, Anselm, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Spinoza (all of whom assert that you can ‘prove’ the existence of God through rational argument) what was the…
In her book, Kitchen Table Wisdom, Stories That Heal, medical doctor and writer, Rachel Naomi Remen shares this story. When she was 14 years old, she took a summer job working as a volunteer in a nursing home for the aged. This wasn’t easy for her. She was young, shy, and mostly afraid of elderly…
The full story of how Jesus Christ came to be born includes elements that we do not easily imagine when we sing our Christmas hymns. Jesus’ family tree and bloodline were far from perfect and this, according to the renowned biblical scholar, Raymond Brown, needs to be kept in mind whenever we are tempted to…
My early religious training, for all its strengths, placed too heavy an emphasis on fear of God, fear of judgment, and fear of never being good enough to be pleasing to God. It took the biblical texts about God being angry and displeased with us literally. The downside of this was that many of us…
The first chapter of the Book of Revelation contains a powerful challenge that’s hidden within the overall esoteric language of that book. John, its author, speaking in the voice of God, says something to this effect: I have seen how hard you work, I have seen your fidelity and your hunger for the truth; but I have this against you: “you have less…
Forty years ago in November of 1982, I began writing this column while a doctoral student in Belgium. I chose to call it ‘In Exile’ for two reasons. Superficially, I chose this title because I was living in Europe, far from much of what I considered as home. While I was not pretending to be…
It is not enough merely to have saints; we need saints for our times! An insightful comment from Simone Weil. The saints of old have much to offer; but we look at their goodness, faith, and selflessness and find it easier to admire them than to imitate them. Their lives and their circumstances seem so…
There’s only one addiction for which we are praised – overworking. With every other addiction, concerned others are looking to put you into a clinic or into a recovery programme, but if your addiction is work, generally it’s seen as virtue. I know of what I speak. I’m a “recovering workaholic”, and not exactly in…