Ronald Rolheiser, in his book The Shattered Lantern, reveals a second factor that keeps most Westerners "busy and bored." The first was narcissism. The second is pragmatism. Initially, I read that word and thought, What on earth is wrong with a little pragmatism? As Rolheiser explains, the word pragmatism stems from the Greek word pragma, […]

Referring back to my post about Henri Nouwen's keen insight into the human dilemma ... Ronald Rolheiser, the author of the book The Shattered Lantern, outlines three factors that keep many of us "busy and bored," frantic to get through our days, but left wondering if, in the end, there is any purpose to all […]

Reading through some of my old books today and looking back on the treasures I underlined. Here's one, written in 1981 - 42 years ago, 2 years before the internet was invented, 23 years before social media became popular, 26 years before the first i-phone was invented. Picture life without those things ... how on […]

Sacred space is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. […]

Be still, and know that I am God … How rarely we do that, just be still. Just let God be God. It is so hard. Because if God is God, then I am definitely not. And sometimes that is tough to face. So, we run and run and run, hoping somehow to prove our […]

We are a competitive culture, aren’t we? We work really hard. We strive. We are creatures of the Protestant work ethic, and most of the outflow is good; we give our best, we aim for excellence, we want to be all we can be. You know the drill … But, when this effort-laden way of […]