Powerless and powerful? At the same time? You’ve been diagnosed with lung cancer and told you have two months to live. Powerless, right? The message of Reinhold Niebuhr’s serenity prayer is familiar: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know [...]
Archive for the ‘Spiritual Exercises’ Category
#56 Ode to the “Little Way”
Posted in Philosophy of Religion, Religion, Religious Philosophy, Spiritual Exercises, Spirituality, tagged Catholic Church, Monica Furlong, Reinhold Niebuhr, Saint Therese, serenity prayer, the "Little Way", tuberculosis on December 11, 2011 | 1 Comment »
#46 Hikers on Pilgrim Routes: A Cautionary Tale
Posted in God, Prayer, Spiritual Exercises, Spirituality, Theology, tagged pilgrimages, Santiago de Compostela, Way of St. James on July 14, 2010 | 3 Comments »
No longer content to hike the Appalachian trail or climb Denali, devout secularists have turned their sights on pilgrim routes. One such route is the Way of St. James which wends through rugged French terrain, up and over the Pyrenees, and across the desolate plains of Northern Spain until it reaches the city of Santiago, [...]
#45 Take to the sea for four days of Lent
Posted in God, Prayer, Spiritual Exercises, Theological Ethics, Theology, tagged Howard Westwood, Lenten Manual on February 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Courage! Howard Westwood’s 1939 Lenten Manual uses outdated, high-flown language, is written in the mode of all-men-all-of-the-time, and mentions several, mostly-forgotten dead people. Still, his exercises and meditations are worth a look. Besides, Lent isn’t supposed to be easy. So, as Westwood might say, abandon your safe haven and sail into the high seas of [...]
#44 Her Nakedness passes her Ph.D. comps!
Posted in God, Spiritual Exercises, Theology, tagged Howard Westwood, Lenten Manual on February 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Phew. Comps are over! Now onward to the dissertation proposal. A Ph.D. student’s work is never done–or so it seems. The season of Lent has begun. Whether or not you spent last Wednesday with a sooty cross on your forehead, you may be wondering how to participate in this season. Horace Westwood’s 1939 Lenten Manual [...]
#42 Inviting Jesus to his Birthday bash
Posted in Religion, Spiritual Exercises, Spirituality, tagged Advent, Biblical Jesus, Christmas, Gospel of John, Gospel of Luke, I and Thou, Jefferson Bible, Martin Buber, Thomas Jefferson, William Short on December 17, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Are you satisfied with a purely secular approach to the Christmas season? If not, you might consider spending some time reading the New Testament gospels and reflecting on the life and teachings of Jesus that they depict. Skeptics will resist this suggestion but could soften their stance when they learn that respected thinkers like Thomas [...]
#21 Love like the whip used to start a top
Posted in God, Prayer, Spiritual Exercises, Spirituality, Theology, tagged Francisco de Osuna, lectio divina, Recollection on May 5, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Those who turn over part of their day to spiritual exercises know that a process like the four-step lectio divina process takes dedication and practice. Without a doubt, the more transcendent the God, the harder it is to reach that God. Because smart readers want to know, and there were smart readers during the late medieval [...]
#20 God: only four short steps away
Posted in God, Prayer, Religion, Spiritual Exercises, Spirituality, tagged lectio divina, Pablo Neruda on April 28, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Stuff in books can help us pray. The monastics prayed through divine reading – in fact, a twelfth-century Carthusian monk by name of Guigo II worked out the four-step process that’s been in use ever since. And what are those four steps? Reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation. You’ll want to select a passage—a paragraph from a book, [...]
#13 Giving up Me-Centrism for Lent
Posted in Ethics, God, Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Religion, Religious Philosophy, Spiritual Exercises, Theological Ethics, Theology, tagged Lent, Levinas, Me-Centrism on March 5, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Think you’re number one? Who doesn’t? Are you a narcissist? Hey, who isn’t? After all, our interior world is most vivid to ourselves. Who could possibly know and care for our well-being and happiness better than ourselves? A tidy amount of Me-Centrism is desirable (we Americans prefer to call it self-esteem), but in sloppy-sized doses, it turns [...]
The Naked Theologian
is a Unitarian Universalist minister working on a Ph.D. in Theology
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