When Jesus was wrapping up his days on earth, he didn't tell us to go to church. He didn't tell us to engage in a spiritualized version of channel surfing, as we hop from place to place in search of just the right programming to entertain us. He told...
Ultimately, musicians of the world must come realise the potential of their calling. Like the shamans, we may serve as healers, metaphysicians, inciters, exciters, spiritual guides and sources of inspiration. If the musician is illuminated from withi...
For true conversion doth not consist in putting away great and outward sins only, but in descending deeply into your own self, searching into the inmost recesses of the heart, the secrets and closets, all the windings and turnings thereof; changing a...
I see the Christian world like this: we've inherited a divided map of the truth, and each of us has a piece. Our traditions teach us that no one else has a valid map and that our own church's piece shows us all the terrain and roads that exist. In fa...
Technology presents us with a unique spiritual challenge. Because it is meant to serve us in fulfilling our created purpose, because it makes our lives easier, longer, and more comfortable, we are prone to assign to it something of a godlike status. ...
Now, we shall be able to judge the extent of the spiritual undernourishment if we look at all these movements from another angle: not as errors but rather as attempts to find healing. I use this comparison: For a long time medical men combated fever ...
I used to listen to the monks repeating the Lord's Prayer; I wondered how they could continue to pray without misgiving to their heavenly father to give them their daily bread. Do children beseech their earthly father to give them sustenance? They ex...
The fault in our stars is the inability to see that the world falls in love with fantasy, fairytales and magic in movies. Even religion asks us to believe in the most unlikely of situations. However, despite all the great movies we love, we choose to...
Understanding the Way of Story as a sacred pattern and a living event. Story can reveal a spiritual path and or the way to healing. Stories become the foundation of health, peacebuilding and vision. Learning to listen, to recognize, to understand and...
Many secular observers and spiritual practitioners alike mistake mystical chanting as a kind of anthropological curiosity or interesting musical diversion from secular mainstream entertainment, sometimes labeling it 'world' or 'folk' music. But utter...
With the weapons that God has made available to you, he expects you to capture and hold captive every thought and idea that comes into your mind, and to examine these against the backdrop of the Word of God. Those thoughts that are in line with God�...
I had successfully attended an event by myself. I had done something that was important to me, regardless of the fact that no one else wanted to go, and I had reconnected with my long lost love of fashion. I was not shunned. I did not die or spontane...
If we think we will have joy only by praying and singing psalms, we will be disillusioned. But if we fill our lives with simple good things and constantly thank God for them, we will be joyful, that is, full of joy. And what about our problems? When ...
Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines against service but screams against hidden service. It strains and pulls for honour and...
Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from our grasp. For the only p...
Above all sins, guard against bold or arrogant ones. You are not beyond the danger of such. If caught in the web of presumptuous sin, call quickly to God for help. If you hesitate, you only give Satan time to entangle you more tightly. But if you cry...
Jesus was not SELFLESS. He did not live as if ONLY other people counted. He knew his value and worth. He had friends. He asked people to help him. At the same time Jesus was not SELFISH. He did not live as if nobody counted. He gave his life out of l...
Repetition and familiarity work. What is repeated becomes familiar, and this becomes a part of us. Our own culture understands this, but alas, not always the church. Far too many equate ritual with spiritual dryness. True, ritual and liturgy can be d...
Probably one of the most surprising discoveries I've made while studying the Bible is that God does not condone religion. It's a consistent theme throughout scripture. Religion is man's external effort to please God. But God doesn't care about all my...
The problem for a lot of people is that they don't really know what they want. They have vague desire: to 'do something creative' or to earn more money or 'to be free', but they can't really pin down what it is precisely that they want. So they drift...
If we further consider this divine panoramic view within which all evil is supposedly a "secret good" is held by a God who, according to Scripture, has a passionate hatred toward all evil, the "solution" becomes more problematic still. For it is cert...
