Category: Salvation
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A Better World is Within You
“We must eliminate poverty, oppression, racism…” How is it possible to disagree with the demand for justice? Who would not agree to end all suffering? How can we not commit our lives to bringing about a better world? The desire for justice and an end to suffering are deeply seductive in our modern world. Being…
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The Spiritual Life in Depression and Anxiety
A very poignant question was sent privately to me after my last post. It asked how I was able to go about my parish work when I was battling with depression and anxiety. I have pondered the question over the past week. On one level, I felt a sense of personal astonishment that, in hindsight, it…
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Weak, Sick, Poor, Tired: A Story for Losers
Nobody wants to be sick. The dependence it fosters, the way it changes and shapes a life are a form of powerlessness that holds no attraction. Poverty (however it is measured) is a massive struggle against forces that steal human dignity. Most homes in poverty include children and are headed by women. Their daily efforts…
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The Work that Saves
“Do not be careless. Pray as much as you can – more frequently and more fervently. Prod yourself – force yourself to do so, for the Kingdom of God is taken by force. You will never attain it without forcing yourself.” ~ Saint Innocent of Alaska Do we cooperate in our salvation? Do our efforts…
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Saving My Neighbor – Just How Connected Are We?
If you are in the “helping professions,” confronting problems in people’s lives, it doesn’t take long to realize that no one is purely and simply an individual. The problems we suffer may occasionally appear to be “of our own making,” but that is the exception rather than the rule. Whether we are thinking of economic…
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The Sacrifice of Worship
When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac (Genesis 22), there was no questioning on Abraham’s part about what was intended. He understood precisely what was involved in such a thing. There was wood to be gathered, an altar of stones to be constructed, the victim to be bound, and then the slitting of…
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Shame in the Public Arena
In 401 AD, twenty-nine Saxon “slaves,” strangled each other to death with their bare hands in their prison cells. They chose this death rather than being forced to fight one another in Rome’s arena. Better death than shame. Their “owner,” the Senator Symmachus (famously known as the “Last Pagan”), wrote of them that they were…
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The Sins of Our Fathers – the Epigenetics of Shame
There is a new word and a new idea in science: epigenetics. It is the study of how the environment and experience alters our body – and alters it in a way such that it becomes part of our genetic legacy. It is, to the mind of some, a genetic form of inherited sin. That’s…
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You Are Not Alone – And Neither Is God
I consider it both a strange mystery and a settled matter of the faith that God prefers not to do things alone. Repeatedly, He acts in a manner that involves the actions of others when it would seem, He could have acted alone. Why would God reveal His Word to the world through the agency…
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Put Your Money to Work – It’s for Your Salvation
And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home. (Luk 16:9) I recall a conversation long ago with a young, up-and-coming entrepreneur. He was a new member of the parish I was serving (Anglican). We had been speaking about…
Father, Dana and Matthew, I live and work in a spiritual desert. Your kindness and kind responses are a cool…