"Make your meditation a continuous state of mind. A great worship is going on all the time, so nothing should be neglected or excluded from your constant meditative awareness."

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Great Swan by Lex Hixon

This can be the work of the Spirit, helping us to see the presence of God everywhere, and empowering us to heal what appears to be broken, or simply to be silent, as if before a great mystery.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sexual harassment

Recently, a woman friend and former colleague asked me what insight I might have into the current sexual harassment issue in America. I have no special insight into what is happening in our crazy, sad world. Only God knows. There has always been a dark side to our culture, and every culture I know about, with regard to sexuality. I didn’t handle mine very well either. We make way too much of it, in both expression and repression, in flaunting and in denial, in shamelessness and shame. The example of our current president is of no help here.

Women have suffered more, but men too have been and are oppressed by cultural expectations and historic patterns that are not caring or kind. Sometimes, less often, women’s desires and actions have been and are disordered, and this has also contributed to men’s “permission" to be disordered too.

Both genders and all sexual orientations are responsible to be caring, faithful, and non-exploitive. This requires a degree of diligent self-awareness…
Read more

"Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God"

I pass along to you this wonderful essay by the great Christian teacher, Simone Weil. If you are unfamiliar with her as a person, see the Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Weil.

Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God
by Simone Weil

* From Waiting for God, trans. by Emma Craufurd New York: Harper and Row, 1951


THE KEY TO A CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF STUDIES is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it

The highest part of the attention only makes contact with God, when prayer is intense and pure enough for such a contact to be established; but the whole attention is turned toward God.

Of course school exercises only develop a lower kind of attention. Nevertheless, they are extremely effective in increasing the power o…
Read more

The Famous Little Bo Peep Expository Sermon

I cannot take credit for this sermon, but I have embellished it based on years of teaching exegesis and expository preaching. I am sure I heard a sermion very like this once, but I may have been sleeping at the time. Enjoy.

Little Bo Peep Sermon

I would like to read to you from the 14th chapter of the book of Mother Goose, where we find these words recorded. “Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep, and she doesn’t know where to find them, but leave them alone and they’ll come home wagging their tails behind them.” Thus endeth the reading of the text.

Now I would like to go through this passage with you and explain to you as best I can the pearls of wisdom contained therein.

The first line tells us that “Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep.” Immediately we learn that the name of the main character in our narrative is Bo Peep; to be more precise, Little Bo Peep. Now from this we can ascertain that Little Bo Peep was a child or possibly a small adult. But since there aren’t too many small adul…
Read more