Asking Questions Out Loud Asking questions out loud was not particularly encouraged when I was a child. I got the impression people felt uncomfortable or confused when I began asking questions. Life was apparently more focused on answering questions than asking them. I was encouraged to be curious, just not necessarily out loud in public. There was nothing I could see wrong with the questions I asked. I wanted to get explanations when things did not make sense to me.... Read more
How Do We Find Time for Thinking? We live our lives at the speed of leadership. Whether we have leadership responsibilities or are trying to keep up with someone else, we are moving. Sometimes we feel we do not have time even to catch our breath. How do we find time we need for thinking? For a long time I believed strong leaders did not really need time to think. I was convinced being a leader meant living a life... Read more
The Stillness of Dark Spaces Each week I help facilitate a group of people who practice centering prayer. I arrive early to make sure everything is ready and to soak in the stillness of dark spaces. It has been over a month since the day with the longest daylight this year. The days are growing shorter and evening shadows begin to grow long earlier each day. I walk into the church where we meet to pray each week without turning... Read more
Living Into Sacred Mystery The mysteries we know do not prepare us to live into sacred mystery. Many of us have a difficult relationship to mystery. We have been taught mystery challenges us with a puzzle to solve. Our mysteries are ones we have read or watched in which detectives work to find a resolution. Our lives are filled with larger, more significant mysteries than the ones we find in detective stories. Some of us approach the mysteries we find... Read more
Pushing Out From the Shore Many of us have an understanding of contemplation as like sitting on the shore watching the river go past. We find stillness and allow our thoughts and feelings to float past without engaging them. Some of us appreciate sitting on the shore as a metaphor for our contemplation. Yes, we practice not chasing distractions and allowing them to float past us. Other people, though, experience sitting still as a distraction of its own. We may... Read more
Recognizing There is More We stand on a beach looking out over the expanse of an ocean. No matter how much water we can actually see, there is more. Watching wave after wave reach the shore we know there are more to come. We look up at the night sky knowing no matter how much we can see, there is more. Stars beyond our ability to count and keep track, and there are still more beyond them. It is not... Read more
Many Silences, One Stillness People sometimes ask me about the difference between stillness and silence. I believe there are many silences, but one stillness. We know the silence of “dead air”when there is supposed to be audio but there is not. There can be silence when something we said to be funny or profound is not received that way. I know the silence which arrives when I reach a certain level of anger. Even though I grow more talkative as... Read more
When Things Spin Out of Control It can be easy to feel like the world and our lives on it are spinning out of control. So much I was taught to believe as a child has crumbled and disappeared. We may feel like the truths on which our lives were built have proven to be false. I was born into a black and white world, a world divided between good and evil. It was easy to understand who was a... Read more
We Go Beyond Where Voices Tell Us to Go Our minds are filled with voices telling us where to go, what to do, how to live our lives. We must choose whether we live the way voices tell us to live or we go beyond where they tell us to go. The voices fill our hearts and minds with expectations and directions about how we should live our lives. Voices ring in our ears to remind us about our responsibilities.... Read more
The Spiritual Practice of Humor We live in a time of tension and conflict, arguing and fighting for what we believe is true. Many of us are attracted to following spiritual practices simply so we can find a little peace. There are prayer practices and scripture practices, practices of contemplation and of action. One of my favorite practices is the spiritual practice of humor. I probably follow the spiritual practice of humor every day. Other people have noticed my passion... Read more
Strategic Monk
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