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Archive for the ‘Spirituality’ Category

#56 Ode to the “Little Way”

Posted in Philosophy of Religion, Religion, Religious Philosophy, Spiritual Exercises, Spirituality, tagged , , , , , , on December 11, 2011 | 1 Comment »

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 [...]

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#46 Hikers on Pilgrim Routes: A Cautionary Tale

Posted in God, Prayer, Spiritual Exercises, Spirituality, Theology, tagged , , 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, [...]

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#42 Inviting Jesus to his Birthday bash

Posted in Religion, Spiritual Exercises, Spirituality, tagged , , , , , , , , , 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 [...]

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#37 This little light of mine

Posted in Religion, Spirituality, tagged , , , , on October 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Did some African American slaves prefer suicide, even if they were afraid of dying?  How many chose to end their lives?  How many regretted not having the means to do so? Suicide requires courage, but requires less courage than submitting to torture. Death is not always the worst outcome, what’s worst is suffering that goes [...]

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#25 Spiritual (But Not Religious)

Posted in God, Religion, Religious Philosophy, Spirituality, Theology, tagged on June 8, 2009 | 4 Comments »

Have you ever noticed how some opinions say more about the opiniators themselves than the thing they’re opiniating about?  God would be one such example.  The opinions people have about God often say more about who they are than they do about who God is.  But, uncharacteristically, God is not the topic of this post.  [...]

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#21 Love like the whip used to start a top

Posted in God, Prayer, Spiritual Exercises, Spirituality, Theology, tagged , , 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 [...]

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#20 God: only four short steps away

Posted in God, Prayer, Religion, Spiritual Exercises, Spirituality, tagged , 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, [...]

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#19 Theology is to spirituality what honeycomb is to honey

Posted in God, Philosophy of Religion, Religion, Spirituality, Theology, tagged , on April 20, 2009 | 3 Comments »

For some, spirituality trumps theology any old day.  For those who call themselves ‘spiritual’, the word ‘theologian’ brings to mind self-styled intellectuals who have stepped into a self-made ivory tower from which they engage in a fruitless search for knowledge of God.  Too bad these theologians look for God in abstract commentaries written by other bookish-types [...]

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#8 Prayer: getting intimate with God

Posted in God, Prayer, Religion, Spirituality, Theology on January 31, 2009 | 1 Comment »

For most people of faith, religion is more than a philosophical discussion.  And for most,  “God is the God of religion only when He is our God and we can speak to Him.”  Rabbi Leo Baeck wrote those words.  He ministered to Jews imprisoned in Theresienstadt before they were shipped to Nazi death camps. He also wrote that [...]

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#5 Martin Luther King, Jr., More Exposed

Posted in God, Spirituality, Theology on January 13, 2009 | 4 Comments »

For Martin Luther King, Jr., God didn’t become a living reality until he discovered the presence of God in his everyday experience. Not until he had felt an inner calm (that he believed was not his own) and had discovered resources of strength (that he believed were not his own) did King conclude God was [...]

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