Spiritual Sunday I’ve been thinking about why it’s sometimes hard to pray for help. Perhaps it’s because asking for help seems an affront to our prideful self sufficiency. Perhaps it’s because we fear that we are not worthy to receive it. I think of how Coleridge’s ancient mariner is so filled with self-loathing that he […]
Tag Archives: Religion
When It’s Hard to Pray
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Ground's Generosity", Earnest Hemingway, In Our Time, Prayer, Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Rumi, Samuel Taylor Coleridge Comments closed
Finding God in Nature’s Church
The bobolink, Dickinson’s sexton and chorister Spiritual Sunday “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy,” instructs the fourth commandment. How are we to keep it holy? Emily Dickinson, a writer who wrestled with the stern Calvinism of her day, observed the sabbath in her own way. She was a private person who was skeptical of […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Some keep the Sabbath going to the Church", "This is what was bequeathed us", Emily Dickinson, Gregory Orr, Heaven, Nature, Spirituality Comments closed
Life Storming Out of the Darkness
Spiritual Sunday Today Western Christians observe Pentecost, the day 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection and 10 days after his ascension into heaven. Pentecost celebrates the moment when the disciplines saw themselves surrounded by tongues of fire and felt lifted up by the Holy Spirit. In the Book of John (14:16) Jesus is reported to have promised the […]
I Saw Eternity the Other Night
Spiritual Sunday As a liberal Episcopalian, I have always maintained, almost as an unquestioned tenet of faith, that there are many roads to the top of the mountain and that no one religion has an exclusive highway to God. Therefore I found myself challenged by an article in The Boston Globe (a tip to Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish for alerting […]
Motherhood, an Astounding Ministry
Annunciation, Philippe de Champaigne (1644) Spiritual Sunday Here’s a poem by Denise Levertov for Mother’s Day. I dedicate it to my own mother and to the mother that I’m married to. I also dedicate is to Maurine Holbert-Hogaboom, at whose funeral I read it ten days ago. It was one of her favorites. Levertov imagines […]
This Fragile Earth, Our Island Home
On Monday I talked about how Silko says that, if we are to end our destructive (and ultimately self-destructive) assaults upon the earth, we must come into spiritual alignment with it. I’m aware that appealing to Native American religions is sure to draw jeers from certain sectors of the political right, especially the Rush Limbaughs […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Defense of Christianity, Environmentalism, Leslie Marmon Silko, Nature, T. S. Eliot Comments closed
