Aug 12 2014
This I am writing at someone’s request—a person I know well and love, who recently told me that her life had had no impact beyond, perhaps, having produced her children. She seems to have given into this thought, and so it is on her children’s achievements that she now pins all her hopes for making …
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Jul 25 2014
My regular readers know that I spent the last month and a half at St. Scholastica Monastery in Duluth, Minnesota, working and thinking and losing myself among the meadows, and losing my senses to the quiet ecstasy of the northern forest and the poignant little wild northern flower. And praying. Losing myself in the chapel. …
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Jul 13 2014
Continued from “Living prophethood. Part I: a fire shut up in my bones.” I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-living-prophethood-part-2/
Jul 12 2014
To Bonnie Thurston, a beautiful hermit, a tremendous theologian, and a thought-bending poet—for reminding me of the things I must say, and for saying things better than I could. You are one of God’s better prophets. The world is glorious. It is brimming with beauty and flowing in peace, it is soaked, it is …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-living-prophethood-part-1/
Jun 25 2014
I am spending this summer at a monastery by Lake Superior. I came here away from the noise of the world, to hear God’s voice more clearly. Between work crises and family worries, it’s not always very quiet inside my head, but as the days pass, in the peace of the chapel and the rustling …
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Jun 17 2014
Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed that easily. —Dorothy Day Another reflection read at the morning prayer sparks an inner dialogue in me – and here I go again, arguing with the author. Last time it was the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, who might still turn out …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-loving-despite/
Jun 12 2014
The author of the epistle to the Hebrews was possibly but not probably St. Paul. It was probably but not definitely one of Paul’s friends and disciples in Italy – perhaps, Priscilla or Barnabas or Apollos or even Timothy himself – but, in any case, though the name of the author is most likely lost, …
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Jun 04 2014
Later this week, I am embarking on a special leg of my discernment’s journey: I will spend three months at a Benedictine monastery in northern Minnesota, live its life and breathe its air. My regular readers have already seen images of it when I spent two weeks there last autumn (see “On mountain ash and …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-words-and-waiting/
May 12 2014
This morning I watched an echocardiogram. It was not the first echo I’d attended. In my years as a medical interpreter at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, I’ve been through at least a dozen of them with my Russian-speaking patients, but every time I see it happen I am awed at this wonder of medical …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-the-wonder-and-why-of-an-echo/
Aug 04 2014
On whence loaves and fishes come.
August 4, 2014
Last Sunday’s gospel was one of the best known of Jesus’s miracles, one that has crossed the boundary between religious and popular discourse and inspired discussion on compassion and charity as much as the meaning of Sacrament, on a holistic approach to the person—body and soul—as much as the malleability of natural laws. It is …
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