In a remarkable book, The Inner Voice of Love, written while he was in a deep emotional depression, Henri Nouwen shares these words: “The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through. It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds deeply than to try to understand…

Some years ago I went on a weekend retreat given by a woman who made no secret about the fact that not being able to have children constituted a deep wound in her life. So she offered retreats on the pain of being unable to have children. Being a celibate and not having my own…

We quite naturally tend to think of the word ‘Christ’ as Jesus’ second name. We think of the name ‘Jesus Christ’ like we think of names like ‘Susan Parker’ or ‘Jack Smith’.  But that’s an unhealthy confusion. Jesus didn’t have a second name. The word ‘Christ’ is a title which, while it includes the person…

It’s no secret that today we’re witnessing a massive decline in church attendance and, seemingly, a parallel loss of interest in religion. The former mindset, within which we worried, sometimes obsessively, about sin, church-going, and heaven and hell no longer holds sway for millions of people. As one parent, worried about the religious state of…

According to Isaac the Syrian, a famous 7th-Century bishop and theologian, a person who’s genuinely humble gives off a certain scent that other people will sense and that even animals will pick up so that wild animals, including snakes, will fall under its spell and never harm that person. Here’s his logic: a humble person,…

Jesus says that if we follow him the cross, pain, will find us. That message is chronically misunderstood. Maybe we would understand it better if Jesus had worded it this way: The more sensitive you become, the more pain will seep into your life. We catch the connection then. Sensitive person suffer more deeply, just…

We live in a culture that idealises youth and marginalises the old. And, as James Hillman says, the old don’t let go easily either of the throne or the drive that took them there. I know; I’m aging. For most of my life, I’ve been able to think of myself as young. Because I was…

Imagine this: a man, entirely careless of all moral and spiritual affairs, lives his life in utter selfishness, pleasure his only pursuit. He lives the high life, never prays, never goes to church, has numerous sexual affairs, and has no concern for anyone but himself. After a long life of this, he’s diagnosed with a…

There’s a huge difference between being bright and being wise, between brilliance and wisdom. We can be highly intelligent, but not very wise. Ideally, of course, we should strive to be both, but that isn’t always the case, particularly today. We’re living in a culture that rewards brilliance above wisdom and within which we pride…

A number of years ago at a symposium on Faith and evangelisation, one of the speakers made a rather startling statement. She, a Christian activist, ended her presentation with words to this effect: “I work for the poor and I do it out of my Christian Faith. I’m committed to this because of Jesus, but I…