The Commons

 “Mainly what I do is try to portray reality, to show things the way they really are. . . . The way the world really works is that the world is not digital, it’s analog. Which means the world is an untidy place. And I portray it as an untidy…

Some sociologists maintain that nearly 70% of adults in the “Western” world are emotionally immature, religiously primitive, and morally infantile. (See Dom Bernardo Olivera, OSCO, “Maturity and Generation: The Spiritual Formation of our Young People,” Spiritus, 3 [Spring 2003], 42.) You can be cognitively brilliant and intellectually sophisticated  but emotionally…

“For Jesus, every person is an exception, says Oscar Wilde. “Christ had no patience with the dull lifeless mechanical systems that treat people as if they were things, and so treat everybody alike: as if anybody or anything, for that matter, was like aught else in the world. For him…

What happened at the tomb that Easter morning was a revelation and exploration, not a seminar. We have made the Christian life more a R&D (Research and Development) seminar than a E&D (Exploration & Discovery) experience and revelation.  

God’s Spirit is at work in your spirit, taking you by surprise, training you, tracking you, transfiguring you into the image of God. St. Paul to the Romans: “You did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the spirit of sonship [i.e.,…

“If you want change in your church, you must be prepared to watch money walk out the door.” John Flowers  

Let the story work on you before you work on a story. Don’t theologize until you let the story put your soul through a work-out  

My favorite gospel, the Gospel of John is “the flower of all Scripture,” wrote third century theologian Origen of Alexandria (184-254). Its roots go so far down that the gospel’s “deep and hidden meaning no one can ever fully gather.” Gregory the Great (AD 540-604) in his commentary on Job…

“Jesus of the Scars” By Edward Shillito (1872-1948)   IF we have never sought, we seek thee now,      Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars, We must have sight of them—pricks on thy brow,      We must hare thee, O Jesus of the Scars.   The heavens…

A Prayer For Everyone, but especially written for Preachers on their Sunday Afternoon Fill my life with laughter, Lord, with things to smile about; with the ability to see the funny side of things, with the grace to take a joke and laugh at myself. Thank you for the greatest…