Psalm 51, the Ash Wednesday psalm, is the acknowledged masterpiece of biblical self-knowledge. "I have been wicked from my birth, a sinner from my mother's womb." No human being has ever looked at himself more unflinchingly than the author of this incomparable penitential psalm. "I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me." [...]
This prayer of Father Thomas Keating and its radical call to be open to the love of God struck me as we cross the threshold into 2023. May we be increasingly open to the love and activity of the Triune God amidst all that life will throw at us in this new year... The Welcoming Prayer [...]
The grace and the impatience to wait In our secret yearnings we wait for your coming, and in our grinding despair we doubt that you will. And in this privileged place we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we and by those who despair more deeply than do we. Look upon your [...]
Helping others grow into Christ rests on an understanding and conviction that the primary shaping work in a person’s life belongs to God. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10, NIV). Our primary burden as God's people is [...]
A Liturgy for Those Flooded With Too Much Information In a world so wired and interconnected, our anxious hearts are pummeled by an endless barrage of troubling news. We are daily aware of more grief, O Lord, than we can rightly consider, of more suffering and scandal than we can respond to, of more hostility, [...]
My soul has become a huge warehouse where day after day the trucks unload their crates without any plan or discrimination, to be piled helter-skelter in every available corner and cranny, until it is crammed full from top to bottom with the trite, the commonplace, the insignificant, the routine.... I now see clearly that, if [...]
When it comes to our work, we confess our desire to grow, determine, fill, and control. Remind us these outcomes belong to you. Instead, may we simply plant, act, build, and offer, releasing the outcomes into your hands because they are not our business. Continue to be yourself in us as we dive into the [...]
Father in Heaven! You have loved us first, help us never to forget that You are love so that this sure conviction might triumph in our hearts over the seduction of the world, over the inquietude of the soul, over the anxiety for the future, over the fright of the past, over the distress of [...]
Blessed Savior, I am not good at resting in the hollow of your hand. Nothing in my experience has taught me this resting. I have been taught how to take charge. I have been taught how to be in control. But how to rest? No, I have no models, no paradigms for resting. That is [...]
God of history and of my heart, so much has happened to me during these whirlwind days: I’ve known death and birth; I have been brave and scared; I have hurt and helped; I’ve been honest, I’ve lied; I’ve destroyed, I’ve created; I’ve been with people, I’ve been lonely; I’ve been loyal, I’ve betrayed; I’ve decided, [...]
On Generosity On our own, we conclude: that there is not enough to go around we are going to run short of money of love of grades of publications of sex of beer of members of years of life we should seize the day seize the goods seize our neighbor’s goods because there is [...]
Gracious God, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, deliver me, I pray, from the easy habit of thinking that my spirituality is something between me and you alone. It is so difficult to accept the idea that my spiritual wholeness cannot be attained outside my life with others. Help [...]