There comes a moment in the second half of life when the pace finally slows enough for us to notice what may have always been there. A quiet and subtle tightrope stretched across the landscape of our inner world. I think I ran too fast in the first half of my life to see it. But now, with more years behind me than ahead, I can feel that subtle sway especially between the movement between hope and hopelessness.
Continue reading “The Tightrope of Hope”
Sometimes I think we forget just how expansive God’s dream for the world really is. We shrink it down to the size of our comfort, our circles, our assumptions. But the God revealed in Jesus keeps breaking those boundaries open. His vision is so big, so generous, so overflowing with love that everyone is invited in.
Continue reading “God Big Enough for Everyone”
Some mornings a single line from a saint feels like it reaches out and taps you on the shoulder. Recently it was St. Isidore of Seville: “Reading the Holy Scriptures confers two benefits. It trains the mind to understand them; it turns man’s attention from the follies of the world and leads him to the love of God.” There is something steadying in that reminder. Scripture doesn’t simply inform us—it forms us, shaping both our thinking and our seeing.
Continue reading “The Love That Holds Us”
There is a quiet power in the simple declaration: there is no other God. Not a threat, not a competition, just a truth that steadies the heart. There is no other source of the love that made you. No other well that can satisfy your thirst. No other presence that knows you so completely and still calls you beloved.
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There are moments when the mind begins to wander—toward worries, toward people we love, toward situations we can’t quite fix. At first it feels like ordinary thinking, the kind that loops and circles. But sometimes, almost without noticing, those thoughts begin to lean toward God. They soften. They open. They turn into something more like prayer.
Continue reading “When Thoughts Turn to Prayers”
To live our faith is to enter the slow, patient work of helping the world see what it has forgotten. Providing the context of our faith generates opportunity because when we speak clearly, gently, and with conviction, those who question can be lifted, almost without realizing it, out of the secular murk they inhabit. In that clearer air, they begin to notice vestiges of God’s grandeur shimmering through the ordinary. It may take years yet the evangelist keeps praying that the scattered pieces will one day assemble into a picture that makes sense: the reasonableness of God’s designs for the world and for human beings.
Continue reading “A Faith That Can Be Seen”
Our passions are gifts. They stir our hearts, move our bodies, and give energy to our days. Yet without order, they can scatter us—pulling us in many directions, leaving us restless and unfocused. The Christian tradition reminds us that passions are meant to be guided, not suppressed. They are to be aligned with love, directed toward God’s dream rather than our own impulses.
Continue reading “Saying No to Say Yes”
There is a quiet longing in every heart that turns toward God. It’s the desire to become a worthy temple of divine glory, a place where love can rest and radiate.
Continue reading “Planted in Grace”
Love is always drawing us toward union, and union naturally opens into communion. Yet communion is so easily fractured. I think of the great cathedrals, Notre Dame, Chartres, each one slowly worn down by an atmosphere that seems harmless at first glance. Pollution settles invisibly on stone, and over time even the strongest structures must be repaired.
Continue reading “The Union We’re Made For”
There is a hidden place within us where every action begins—not in our hands, not even in our words, but in the quiet chamber of intention. The saints remind us that purity of intention is what frees us to forget ourselves, to seek first the glory of God, and to trust that whatever we surrender in love becomes, mysteriously, our blessing. When our intention is clear, simple, and God‑ward, even the smallest act becomes luminous.
Continue reading “The Quiet Power of Intention”
Smitten With Goodness 