12-step – Ordinary Time

Sundays@6: Notes for online parish book study session on Buddhism, ‘Holy Envy’ by Barbara Brown Taylor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxq-RiLb-6M Lightly edited copy of a blast email sent out to participants in an online book discussion group Debi and I facilitate for our parish, Peace Lutheran Church of Springfield, Ill. (It meets Sundays at 6 p.m. — hence the name.) We are discussing “Holy Envy” by Barbara Brown Taylor. Her title comes from Harvard Divinity School dean (and … Continue reading Sundays@6: Notes for online parish book study session on Buddhism, ‘Holy Envy’ by Barbara Brown Taylor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YOQbE692s8&t=266s Fr. Brendan McManus SJ, Gardiner Street Parish Dublin, recorded Oct. 25, 2020 As I reach the halfway point in chemotherapy this week, I'm making a special effort to take things one day at a time. So let me tell you about a terrible, horrible, maybe kinda good, not-so-bad-after-all day I had last week. As … Continue reading 12-step wisdom and a terrible, horrible, kinda good, maybe not-so-bad day halfway through chemotherapy

Pilgrims entering Garden of Gethsemane, Jerusalem, November 2012. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. -- Proverbs 3:5-6 (NRSV): Our prayer doesn’t change God’s mind, it changes us. It helps us change our own minds and hearts. It … Continue reading A Jesuit, a Protestant reformer and a spiritual mutt walk into an ER (instead of a bar): How I’m learning to trust God

Peter Paul Rubens, Miracle of St. Ignatius of Loyola (Wikimedia Commons) There's a story I really like in James Martin's Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life. An editor-at-large of America magazine who has written several New York Times best-sellers, Martin sets it up the by saying the Jesuits pride themselves on … Continue reading Practical ways on a Jesuit website in Ireland to ‘face into the storm’ of cancer diagnosis and treatment

Matthias Stom, St. Peter at Prayer, ca. 1633-40 (Wikimedia Commons) One thing about getting a cancer diagnosis -- it tends to focus your mind, especially if you've been working on your prayer life already. Increasingly since I was diagnosed toward the end of October, I've been falling back on what's sometimes called the Prayer of … Continue reading Luther and the indwelling ‘Christ present in faith’ — Finnish theologians, Irish Jesuit offer a way of coping with a scary diagnosis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IKpFHfNdnE Editor's note (Oct. 17). I started this a couple of days before I had a tumor removed from my bladder. But I ran out of time, and I was in no mood last night to stay up late journaling before a 5:30 a.m. check-in time today. The procedure went off as scheduled; I'm home … Continue reading What’s the right way to do centering prayer? ‘Pray as you can’: A stripped-down Trappist spiritual practice for today

Jan Brueghel the Elder and Pieter Paul Rubens, Fall of Adam and Eve (Wikipedia) When God closes a door, as an old saying down South has it, God leaves a window cracked open somewhere. We may have to exercise a little creativity to find it, but there's always another opening. Another old saying, one I … Continue reading Stray thoughts on original sin, Franciscan spirituality and a painting of the Garden of Eden by Jan Brueghel the Elder

Click here https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/2021/ for directory. Last week I signed up for Richard Rohr's daily meditations. I figured a brief daily exercise might lend a little discipline to my spiritual routine (or lack thereof) in these days of lingering pandemic, self-quarantine and isolation. I've read his stuff before, and it liked it. So I haven't been … Continue reading A spiritual mutt discovers Franciscan spirituality in a time of apocalypse, learns he knew at least some of it all along

So Friday the Jesuit magazine America put an article up on its website with the rather sobering headline "Three Spiritual Exercises for Facing a Long Future with Covid-19." Not exactly what you want to see heading into the weekend, but it couldn't have come at a better time -- between the everlasting pandemic, the unfolding … Continue reading Now. Here. This. A kinda Zenlike mantra for a spiritual wannabe and aging 12-stepper exhausted by the pandemic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xInuesYrUPA Steve Cooney's arrangement of 'Si Bheag Si Mohr' (Carolan's melody begins at 1:32). It started with a visit to the eye doctor's back in October, when the case positivity rate for Covid-19 was low enough to allow for routine medical appointments. My eye test came back with signs of the very beginnings of something … Continue reading How a trip to the eye doctor’s and the Serenity Prayer renewed my interest in Turlough O’Carolan, the blind Irish harper