Practicing the Presence in Gethsemane

May 7, 2019 By Kathleen Mulhern

All the anguished cries for mercy, all the urgent messages to come quickly, all the despairing and forlorn sobs we hear on the lips of different people in the Gospels—lepers, agonized parents, desperately ill, friends of sufferers, frightened fishermen, hopeless beggars, grieving mothers, heartbroken sisters—all of them are echoed in Gethsemane on the lips of Jesus. He becomes the anguished one, the desperate one, the one imploring for mercy. He knows the distress and the pleading for a different outcome... Read more

Unmoored Christianity: 12 “Anchor” Questions

April 30, 2019 By Kathleen Mulhern

There is some weird comfort in the fact that most heresies are old ones. For the most part, if we arm ourselves with the teachings of scripture and the Church, we’re fairly able to lift up the carnival masks of new strange teachings and find the faces of quite familiar challengers. A weird comfort, perhaps, but no great assurance, for the truth is that most of us are entertained and delighted by the fresh appearances of old heresies, and they... Read more

Silent Harps, Shredded Vitas, and Spilled Chanel: A Sunday Sermon on the Spiritual Journey

April 24, 2019 By Kathleen Mulhern

This semester I’ve been teaching a class called the Spiritual Journey and Human Development. We examine the life of faith and how it develops, assuming that it does develop over time; we consider how sometimes we seem to make progress, sometimes we regress, and sometimes we just slow down to a near state of immobility. For example, we examine biblical models of the spiritual journey: How did Joseph’s faith develop through the crises of his life? Can we see Elijah’s... Read more

On Discouragement and Trusting in God: Readings from a Puritan

October 26, 2018 By Kathleen Mulhern

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God. ~ Psalm 42.11 Peace is Christ’s language and this is his disposition still. Thus he is engaged. You know it is God’s way and manner to deal with the children of men according to their various dispositions, to stoop and condescend unto their infirmities. … So long as... Read more

An Immensely Formidable Unity

August 28, 2018 By Kathleen Mulhern

So, I’ve tried to listen well to the comments provoked by my last post. Some think that I’ve proved the vacuity of the Christian message. If it can mean anything, it obviously means nothing. Another thinks I’ve uncovered the Rorschach nature of Christian faith. “What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?” So I revisited my palette of Christian voices—rock stars, philosophers, Puritans, and ascetics—to see if indeed there is anything purely and singularly Christian about them. Take off... Read more

One of These Things Is Not Like the Other: Real Christianity?

August 14, 2018 By Kathleen Mulhern

I begin with the best of intentions, but rabbit holes multiply like bunnies, and are nigh on irresistible. I’m teaching a course this fall on Evangelical spirituality, and so it started with Francis Schaeffer’s True Spirituality and some online research around his ideas on propositional truth. But then I got waylaid by one of those click bait articles (yes, we’re all targets) on Lady Gaga’s sartorial evolution (the raw meat gown is a never-ending what? really?), where it mentioned in... Read more

Relics, Renovations, Wretchedness, and Grace: a Personal Reflection

July 31, 2018 By Kathleen Mulhern

We have recently done something I really couldn’t have imagined just a few years ago. We did something we’ve never done before. We did something we ought to have done, with great frequency, over the last 26+ years. And in doing this, we initiated a virtual archaeological dig, an extreme makeover, and a wrenching awakening to a new stage of life. A midlife crisis, perhaps? A reckless adventure in imagining a different future? Such drama. With an introduction like that,... Read more

Take a Larger Way: Spiritual Counsel from a Place of Darkness

June 21, 2018 By Kathleen Mulhern

Janene looked at me with now uncharacteristic clarity in those big blue eyes and said… “The Lord Jesus is taking care of me and my brain, and it makes all the difference.” Janene is gone from us, deep in the darkness of dementia. Two years ago, though, she brought out this remarkable observation from that darkness: The Lord Jesus is taking care of me and my brain, and it makes all the difference. So while we watch and pray, Janene and Jesus... Read more

I Believe in the Prosperity Gospel

May 31, 2018 By Kathleen Mulhern

Maybe two of you who are reading this have opened it because of the title, and one of you is looking for affirmation of deeply held convictions and the other of you is outraged and ready to rumble. Let’s begin by defining some terms and then we’ll see if either of you feels better. “Prosperity Gospel” is the term used mainly by its critics to describe the belief systems of those who teach that God wants most of all that... Read more

A Spirit of Tranquility: Benedict

May 29, 2018 By Kathleen Mulhern

The English soul, according to Thornton, is Benedictine. Not Jesuit or Franciscan or Carmelite or Carthusian or even Cistercian. Benedictine. It goes with the homeliness of English spirituality, for Benedict’s charism was the way he created a home for the brothers, a place where they could work out their salvation, serve one another and the world, and grow in prayer and love. It has structure, but it isn’t crafted as rigorously as an Ignatian approach; it is rich in mysticism,... Read more