· 14 July 2008 | 226 words
There is a line from a William Stafford poem: "It's for the best," my mother said, "Nothing can ever be wrong for anyone truly good." And then I look at the suffering Jesus endured, and the suffering of all people....
· 4 November 2007 | 254 words
This statement by Ronald Rolheiser, from his book The Shattered Lantern, got me to wondering. When there is no pattern to our actions we experience meaninglessness. Just because I do not recognize or perceive a pattern, does this mean that...
· 25 September 2007 | 330 words
From Br. Joseph -- Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. (Matthew 5:7) The word mercy is one of those loaded words with many meanings and connotations. Unfortunately, the modern use of this word tends to focus only...
· 18 July 2007 | 271 words
When I was younger, late high school and especially in college, I identified with Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." It was the motto for the Age of Rationalism. It is still often used in today's postmodernism. After finding faith,...
· 13 July 2007 | 206 words
From the movie, Red Planet: Chantilas: [Suppose] we just finished poisoning the earth and everyone was dead in a hundred years. Then what was the point of anything? Art, beauty--all gone--the Greeks, the Constitution, people dying for freedom, ideas. None...
· 3 July 2007 | 298 words
In The Courage to Be, Paul Tillich writes (after page 148): The act of accepting meaninglessness is in itself a meaningful act. It is an act of faith. We have seen that he who has the courage to affirm his...
· 2 July 2007 | 579 words
I'm on page 148 of Paul Tillich's The Courage to Be. He has painstakingly described three types of anxiety that are part of being human (ontologically speaking). There is the anxiety of fate and death, of which the western ancients...
· 26 June 2007 | 418 words
I am standing on the cusp of a low hill. I can see my goal across the way on top a very distant hill. The path below through the valley is obscured. I can see no clear way to proceed....
· 26 December 2006 | 152 words
Life is like a pearl: it needs a grain of sand at its center--death--as the irritant, the enemy, to stimulate the production of the mother-of-pearl of life around it. But death remains at its center. At the heart of...
· 9 December 2006 | 692 words
In Three Philosophies of Life, Peter Kreeft writes about three books in the Old Testament that essentially outline three ways to live and view life: Ecclesiates, life as vanity; Job, life as suffering; and Song of Songs, life as love....
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us