Christians have such a weird relationships with hard emotions. I think it is because we often are led to believe that expressing sadness, disappointment, anger, or fear means that we don't trust God, we don't believe God is good; that we are somehow failing God  by being less than perfectly cheerful every day of our […]

A plea for the under-rated skill/quality/trait of self-awareness ... Carl Jung said: "Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people." Do you ever turn off all the noise, cease all the anxious running, quiet all the condemning or boasting voices in your own head, and ask God, […]

I am starting a new book for the summer ... Learning to Walk in the Dark, by one of my favorite writers, Barbara Brown Taylor. Just to give you a glimpse of the theme, and the beauty, here is what she writes: "Darkness is shorthand for anything that scares me - either because I am […]

Was listening to a podcast again yesterday  and heard these beautiful words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to […]

And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. (Soren Kierkegaard)

To live without prayer is to live without God, to live without a soul ... To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. (Abraham Joshua Heschel)