weekly reflections
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Week 13: the table (part 2)
My heart is always filled with awe and wonder on nights such as these. I only invite others—not to my table with anything I can provide—to his table, the one with the remedy for the maladies of our hearts. He who is himself the remedy. My only hope is to create a space where he Continue reading
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Week 12: the table (part 1)
“I will come back every f*cking week for the rest of my f*cking life whenever I’m in this town,” he said as he wiped tears from his face. The very best compliment I could have ever received. My new friend “T” started shedding tears as I ended the night in prayer. I had shared the Continue reading
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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 6: seeing (part 2)
Almost two years ago, I was in Arequipa, Peru. I connected with a couple who help run a home for young Peruvians with mental and physical handicaps, most of them severe. I remember my first afternoon visiting the orphanage. Most of the individuals have severe mental handicaps. Some of them can communicate a little; many Continue reading
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Week 5: seeing
Years ago, during a night in the city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, I had an ever so small encounter that, for whatever unknown reason, has left a lasting emotional impact. I meandered through a crowded night bazaar with sidewalk shops and stands, enjoying the evening and people watching (as I always did without 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
a kingdom built of seeds 