• Week 16: The affections of Christ clash with my desire to retaliate

    I have been drawn back into the Sermon on the Mount. Reading it, I hear the voice of Dallas Willard. It takes me a long time to move through the Sermon anymore because I feel like when it’s over I quit hearing Dallas as much.

  • Pentecost Sunday

    Almighty God, on this day, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, you revealed the way of eternal life to every race and nation: Pour out this gift anew, that by the preaching of the Gospel your salvation may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity…

  • Setting people free and spiritual warfare against systems

    Acts 16:16-34 Paul and Silas are in Philippi. A small group of believers has formed and Paul is teaching them the way of Christ. Powers are being stirred.

  • Week 15: The Affections of Christ Over Ideologies

    Thomas Merton in New Seeds of Contemplation wrote this: “A revolution is supposed to be a change that turns everything completely around. But the ideology of political revolution will never change anything except appearances.”

  • Contrasting views on hatred and hell

    I came across a post from a Christian nationalist and then a thought from Thomas Merton in New Seeds of Contemplation.

  • Week 14: The affections of Christ can save us from culture wars

    John 13:34–35 (CEB) 34 “I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. 35 This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other.” We seem to want culture wars, so I’m not sure this post will mean anything to a lot of…

  • God doesn’t need soldiers

    Some thoughts from Pope Leo XIV: ” Brothers, sisters… I speak to you, especially to those who no longer believe, no longer hope, no longer pray, because they think God has left.

  • Week 13: The Affections of Christ and Rising to the Call

    “Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man the or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of…

  • Remember the poor

    As I began to reflect HERE about Pope Leo XIV’s choice of name and possible direction of his papacy, I wanted to reflect more on Pope Leo XIII and the encyclical, “On Capital and Labor” written in 1891.

  • Week 12: The Affections of Christ and Silence

    This quote from Thomas Merton is incredibly wise… and hard. Do everything you can to avoid the noise and the business of men. Keep as far away as you can from the places where they gather to cheat and insult one another, to exploit one another, to laugh at one another, or to mock one another with their false gestures…