Month: March 2014

limiting beliefs

There is life in the desert.  It is hard to face one's preconceptions of a place or a people or a person or a liturgy or a musical style or a theological construct.  To face these judgements requires great humility. It is hard to see people fast from chocolate cake...

noqkwivi and triffle

(desert pilgrimage) It is so easy to wax poetic about simplicity or transformation in Lent when writing from a well-appointed house in Denver's metropolis.  I can simply skip one meal, have another of broccoli, switch out coffee for herbal tea, cancel some appointments, expand my prayer hour to three and...

pueblo echo

From within this room I can hear the longings of men and women who laid these stones in 1100. As Christians in Europe fought their fights. The Pueblo people, they loved this land. They loved the volcanic ash which had so recently fallen and made the land black, fertile and...

retreats: demons and desert

Yesterday, day three of my retreat, I spent most of the day here, looking out at this desert space. After a long hike, I sat on a smooth rock, looked out into the desert and listened to Life and to MY life for three one-hour periods, punctuated with water, stretching and...

desert places

A retreat, done well, can be a time of deep reflection, observation and integration.  And one in a desert can be grounding. As I think back on the retreats I took as a monk, they were as much a success or failure as any I take now.  By that I...

steel cut oats, butter and a silver spoon

  Steel cut oats There are few things in life I love more than butter and God. Steel cut oats in a wooden bowl with a silver spoon on a cold day draped in the oil and cream of butter can transfigure a day and remind one that manna takes...

touch

When we sit with God, in the exposed silences of our day - that is, the intentional sitting, designed to connect us for whatever downloads are waiting - the pushing and prodding, stroking and caressing God accomplishes convince me that God is working hard to change the world.  A long...

fasting

  I respectfully decline to fast in Lent.  I fast from time to time and God knows (literally) that some fasting for an overweight middle aged man is a good thing.  I find fasting to have great value for sharpening the senses and focusing the mind.  I always fast before...

retreat

In the late afternoon, when the cathedral is dark - but the afternoon light is pushing in through the windows - the cathedral nave is a lovely place to sit alone with God and one's thoughts.  The three of us just look at each other with loving approval and gratitude...

spiritual health

  As we finish up recruiting surveys for the Renewal Works Program, I hope the congregation can see the amazing opportunity which lays before it.  Never has there been an anonymous survey like this one in the church before.  Never will such a remarkable test-baseline have been established.  Never have...