Life can feel like living in the desert for anyone facing financial, emotional, relational, medical, or societal pressure. Alternatively, we may feel like we’re drowning in an angry turbulent sea. Wilderness and sea – the two biblical analogies representing chaos, existential angst, overwhelming difficulties, the threat of nonbeing. Ancient peoples could not live in either the wilderness or the sea. Modern people cannot either without significant technology to alter the envir

Healthy individuals have developed internal values such as honesty, compassion, integrity, diligence, commitment, and respect. Positive...

Desperately fighting one’s way through encased granite like a vein of ore, enclosed, pressed, nearly stagnant… Trapped in a tiny,...

Vincent Van Gogh depicted spiritual light in every dwelling of his starry night painting except for the church, which remains dark....

I’ve been through some severe traumas in my life. Each one shattered a persona, an image of who I thought I was – successful husband,...

A most hopeless case. Alone, he lay in a reverse-isolation ICU room with no hope of surviving the day. No amount of opioids and fentanyl...

“Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees;” (John the baptizer, Matthew 3:10a, NRSVUE) Though we may tend to not recognize it,...

Mystery I believe that God is making all things new. I believe that all evil will eventually be eliminated. I believe there is coming a...

When I was in high school, I had a thought-provoking, intellectually stimulating English teacher who asked us early in the year to write...

Jesus did not work miracles simply for the sake of showing off divine power. Nor did he work miracles just to prove he was the Messiah....

The Guest House Rūmī Translated by Coleman Barks This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a...

I If God exists, what is God Like? The most basic question, I suppose, involves the existence of God. Assuming for a moment that the vast...

First in a Three-Part Series My son Elliott took his own life at the age of (almost) 15. He did so on my 35 th birthday. Forty years...

Second of Three in a Series Rather than deny, disown, or distance ourselves from grief, we need to own it, to integrate it into our...

Last in a Three-Part Series First, allow me to share from experience what works and what doesn’t. Please don’t tell me Everything will be...

Our core being, what Jung referred to as the Self, is what might be seen in traditional Christian theological terms as the regenerated...

Spirituality at its core is an earnest seeking after God, a burning desire to immerse oneself in the Divine, to be one with the Ground of...

An exploding volcano rains hellfire and wreaks havoc on villagers. An earthquake swallows an entire city. Insurance companies call them...

As far back as I can remember, I have on occasion been very aware of the divine presence. I just knew God existed. And, because I was...

Imagine a big old house with a huge, dank dirt floor basement filled with stuff. Nobody’s been down there for decades, maybe centuries....