Spiritual Reflections

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the spiritual combat of Lent. Dom Prosper Guéranger notes we face two enemies, internal passions and external devils, both from our pride and refusal to obey God. God forgave him his sin, but He punished him.

He was a very old man … in his late 70s… absorbed in one of the simplest tasks on earth … his movement had a dignity that I do not remember seeing in the city with its more important tasks.

This Buddhist monk, a best-selling author on happiness, was asked in an interview to describe the way to attain happiness. He said…

It’s a Sunday evening at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and the pews are full. Redeemer is a conservative Evangelical Christian congregation, but the parishioners don’t fit the easy Bible Belt stereotypes.

Today, I boarded an American Airline plane in San Francisco for the cross-country flight to Indianapolis –  and in spite of the hundreds of  times that I’ve flown on a plane, I felt again that special thrill when I stepped toward the airplane door, glancing down at that crack of space opening up below my legs, between the edge of the fuselage and the movable entrance ramp, a crack that will become 35,000 feet deep when we are airborne.

It's early morning in the heart of Oakland's Skid Row, and Steve F. is coming toward us, me and Artie G., from across the street, bouncing from leg to leg, waving at us with one hand and balancing a styrofoam plate with a few pancakes in the other hand, grinning his maniac drug grin.

Teachers deal  more with social horrors - violence, vulgarity, promiscuity  - than teaching inherited traditions, wisdom, virtues, this educator says.

We all, at times, suffer from great illusions. We confuse not having peace with not being aware of the peace we possess.