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I've never been good at beauty. Yes, of course I can in some sense understand...

“I don’t care to wake up in the morning without hope. Hope is a survival...

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And...

The towering redwoods of northern California have always mystified me. I'm constantly swept away with...

I can't remember precisely what his answer was, but it was not the enthusiastic one...

Listening to the voice of my heart has never come easy for me. I'm usually...

Flannery O’Connor once said in justification of her fiction that, in a deaf culture, one...

This post is part of the Patheos Catholic Channel series, "Catholicity:  Identity and its Discontents." ...

When I was approached by the Patheos Catholic channel editors to create a contemplative blogging...

The bells began to ring just outside my window for Vigils, 3:15 am prayer, and...

Exhausted. Spent. So weary of words. There are those who seem able to contain it,...

It is the feast of St. Maria Goretti, who on this day 114 years ago...

  Let us imagine a feast. And let us imagine someone too mentally ill to...

Loneliness. I think above all, this is the single word I want you to remember...

In 2012 I began traveling to monasteries for respite, silence, solitude, and space. I started...

“Spend 10 or 15 minutes praying for healing.” It doesn’t sound much like penance. Unless...

It starts in a room of silence.  A room where disciples are gathered together in...

“Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise, but as wise, making...

I generally don’t discuss politics. Not because they aren’t important, and not because I don’t...

“Is there a pill I can take for that?” said my eight year old son,...

Sex. It’s what the Song of Solomon is about. But ancient Christian readers were prudes...

And there in that land I encountered a strange race of people, to whom was...

So, God said to Job, everything’s over and you need to pray for your friends...

  In his eminently affable and uncontroversial way, theologian Stanley Hauerwas once suggested he’s a...

“He is not here.” So were their words when I came upon the tomb and...

"The watchmen that went about the city found me, They smote me, they wounded me;...

In the prior Lenten post on Henri Nouwen's Reaching Out, we finally reached what is both most fundamental...

In our journey through Henri Nouwen’s Reaching Out, we have discussed the transition from loneliness...

  “This is the what makes Christians walk away.”   I was talking to a...

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building...