Christianity
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Week 11: silence
Stillness, silence, and waiting are acts of faith. They are a willingness to face the nothingness, the emptiness, the void. They authenticate a stark willingness to accept the possibility of hearing nothing, receiving no answers, gaining no direction. Sometimes (or often), it is silence for silence, darkness for darkness. But this is where we discover… Continue reading
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Week 10: you are a light
“God doesn’t give a gift without giving an obligation to use it.” – Christian Wiman We sometimes assume that to do what we do not desire is to be right, to be the martyr. But to be what we were made to be, this is to be the true martyr, because the greatest battles of… Continue reading
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Week 9: losing to find (part 2)
“Piously we produce our images of you / till they stand around you like a thousand walls. / And when our hearts would simply open, / our fervent hands hide you.” – Rilke We want control. We crave it. Many of us want to be told what to believe, how to believe, how to live,… Continue reading
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Week 8: losing to find
If (or when) we begin to diverge from what we were so stringently taught to believe, feelings of fear and guilt may follow. Our context, upbringing, circumstances, and environment are so powerful, and have so much control over our thinking and beliefs of what is good and bad, right and wrong, true and untrue. If… Continue reading
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Week 7: known over knowing
“In a world where people believe they are not hungry, we must not offer food but rather an aroma that helps them desire the food that we cannot provide…[we] must endeavor to be a question rather than an answer and an aroma rather than food.” Peter Rollins When I ask for answers, give me more… Continue reading
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Week 4: forgetful
“I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often.” What have I forgotten, my father? Will I leave you, like so many others? Or will I stay with the seemingly few? I don’t want to be… Continue reading
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Week 3: these three men
Sitting there with those two men (“K” and “J” we’ll call them), I felt something I haven’t felt in a long time. A little spark, a little hunger, a little thirst, the challenge of not having the answers to difficult questions; men of various backgrounds and different experiences and opinions, listening to one another without… Continue reading
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Week 2: living questions
I recently finished my first book by Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (if you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and read it). There’s a specific conversation that occurs between Jayber and one of his professors at the college he’s attending as a “pre-ministerial student.” He wants to leave; he no longer wants to be a… Continue reading
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Week 1: creative tension
I don’t necessarily like new year’s resolutions; goals sound a little better. Are you setting any goals for yourself this year? I’m setting at least one. One recent night while trying to fall asleep, it came to me: Write one reflection every week for a year. If you don’t start right now, you never will.… Continue reading
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Turn around
“Trifles make the sum of life.” – David Copperfield I almost didn’t turn around. I was about to enter the infamous “canyon road” (Rt. 191) that follows the Gallatin River and would take me home to Big Sky from Bozeman, and where I would lose cell reception. I was already at least 20 minutes and quite… Continue reading
a kingdom built of seeds 