What Are We Going to Do For Lent This Year? The liturgical season of Lent begins three weeks from tomorrow on Ash Wednesday. What are we going to do for Lent this year? Those of us anticipating Lent do not have much time to prepare. We have questions to answer and intentions to decide, and are running out of shopping days before Lent. Some of us think Lent is about giving things up. It is not about chocolate, caffeine, alcohol,... Read more
Looking for My Epiphany I am looking for my epiphany. My liturgical church tells me this is the season of Epiphany, so there should be a good one waiting for me. It must be just around a corner or hiding in a box in the back of a closet. I suppose I expect it to be like a birthday or Christmas present, hidden so it can be a surprise. Epiphany is not a long season. I hope my epiphany will... Read more
Turning Dancing Into Mourning I live in Southern California, close to the cities of Alhambra and Monterey Park. Last weekend, a man turned my neighbors’ dancing into mourning. A holiday weekend, the first Lunar New Year people were encouraged to spend together since the Pandemic. The beginning of the Year of the Rabbit, a good omen. Lunar New Year’s Day was not something I celebrated while I was growing up. I have learned about it living here. We woke up... Read more
Can We Make a Difference? How do we know when we make a difference? There are times when we reflect on our lives and wonder whether we can make a difference. Do our careers, our relationships and families, our lives matter? What effect are we having on the world around us? Are the people we know any better because of what we do each day? We watch the news and learn about tragedies and difficulties all around the world. Living... Read more
Speaking Truth to Power It is easy for us to be confused about Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and this weekend. Speaking truth to power is what this holiday weekend is all about. For some of us it feels like a few days for football playoff games or college basketball. We need more information about this man named Martin Luther King, Jr. Some of us believe he was a rabble rousing troublemaker and others see him as a dreamer. He... Read more
The Value of Remote Places Many of us believe there is a special sacredness in remote places. We leave the urban neighborhoods where we live and seek spiritual life in remote places. Sometimes on mountain tops or beaches along the ocean, or in the woods, we look for sacred spaces. Familiar cathedrals and abbeys have been absorbed by cities, and we look for more remote places. We want to get away, to put the diversions and distractions of our everyday... Read more
Epiphanies Reveal Themselves in Stillness Epiphanies reveal themselves in stillness, drawing us into deeper understanding and appreciation of the life within us. Some of us try to cultivate epiphanies, encouraging them to grow in neat rows according to our schedule. We would appreciate being able to plan them out and have them bloom at regular intervals. Then we could journal about these hothouse epiphanies and show them off. We come to appreciate, though, epiphanies cannot be domesticated. Epiphanies reveal themselves... Read more
We Begin to Prepare Why is it such a challenge for us to begin to prepare for something new? Many of us resist beginning each morning. Some of us procrastinate beginning new projects. I know people who practice distracting themselves with obstacle after obstacle so they do not have to begin to prepare. Some people rely on preparation to avoid beginning. They may not feel they are ready to start. There is so much more for them to learn and... Read more
It is a challenge to write a contemplative review of any year, and 2022 is more of a challenge than usual. Each year is filled with its own truths, in overwhelming, specific detail. 2022 is no exception. Parts of the year whizzed past as if blown by hurricane winds. I seem to recall something about a Winter Olympics and a few other sporting events. There were elections with unexpected results and the gradual recognition we live in a world of... Read more
The Final Week of the Year This is it. The week at the end of a year shaped by climate change, the final week of this year. Some of us are still stretching to try to reach goals we set for ourselves this year. We may be fooling ourselves or we may have just enough left in us to complete a few more tasks. In a few days we will reach the end of the year. Some of us are... Read more
Strategic Monk
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