“For God alone my soul waits in silence” Ps 62:1 God is always “Other”. God is not our image of God. Our understanding of God can be more of an enslaving idol than any physical representation. The prophets call us to reject idolatry. “Be still and know that I am God” Ps 46:10 To be
Mindfulness is everywhere. Practices from Buddhism and Hinduism are being used in home, schools, and workplaces. People are cleansing their chakras, feeling their breathing, and visualising… Schools are practicing mindfulness at the start of every lesson… While some have criticised the trendiness as McMindfulness, I want to focus here on this being yet another example
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The Song of Songs: A Contemplative Guide [Paperback] Song of Songs: A contemplative guide [Kindle Edition] by Graeme Watson SPCK Publishing 156 pages I have mentioned, previously, meeting the author of this book, Rev. Graeme Watson, and his wife, Liz, and spending a delightful evening with them at the home of fellow blogger, Fr Ron
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Saint Ignatius Loyola (ca. October 23, 1491 – July 31, 1556) teaches a method of prayer in which one starts with the first word of the Lord’s Prayer, mulling over it, meditating on it, approaching it in the sense of lectio divina, resting in God’s presence with it, and then in time moving on to
Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us
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I have previously written about the Bible in the Life of the Church project which was commissioned by the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) at its meeting in Jamaica in May 2009. Now a commenter has pointed us to the publication of its Phase 1 report and material leading into Phase 2. There is a lot
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Today, July 11, is the feast of St Benedict (480 – 547). Benedict describes a “middle way”, via media, bringing together positive ends – not either/or, but both/and. Community and solitude. Prayer and work. And so forth. He has a stress on the daily office, and on reading the scriptures in such a way as
Spirituality and religion “Spiritual but not religious” I am indebted to Sister Sandra Schneiders’ paper “Religion and Spirituality: Strangers, Rivals, or Partners?” (PDF) for elucidating the relationship between religion and spirituality. “Non-religious” spirituality at its worst is “privatized, idiosyncratic, personally satisfying stance and practice that makes no doctrinal claims, imposes no moral authority outside one’s
Some discussions, on this site and elsewhere, are different variants of reflecting on what the Bible is for Christians. In the midst of some people’s tub-thumping of the term sola scriptura (belief in the Bible alone) some people can give the impression that those who do not use the term sola scriptura somehow do not
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Pope Francis issued an apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, The joy of the Gospel. I advocate that you read the actual text. In some ways this is articulating the shift in tone at the Vatican. His first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, was completing a text started by Pope Benedict XVI. This is his own. This text has
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