The opening battle sequence in the movie Cold Mountain realistically portrays the gruesome nature of Petersburg's "Battle of the Crater." Union engineers created a massive crater with explosives in an attempt to penetrate the Confederate lines. The scene is a graphic depiction of life's fragile nature. A reminder…
In January, near a sign that read, “Prayer only No visit. No phone,” I sat and prayed, in Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris.Watching the inferno this past week, my heart hurt. Sometimes we don't have words.I can tell you that I…
This week, a saint died. Mary Oliver, the patron saint of paying compassionate attention. Her poetry is the art of bearing witness to our world. She invited us to put our lips to the sacred present in the ordinary. She…
Sherry Turkle visited a Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History with her teenage daughter. At the entrance of the show stood a cage with two grand Galapagos turtles. Magnificent creatures from a fantasy world. Feeling sorry for the turtles, and completely unmoved by the wonder…
Going through his five-year-old son's backpack, a father found a picture of a little boy standing under a rainbow crying. His first thought was, "Oh God, my son is having some serious problems." When he asked his son about the picture, the little boy told his father that he had been playing…
In her delightful book Life is a Verb, Patti Digh writes about a visit to Washington D.C. She has traveled to meet her husband David. Her flight arrives in the afternoon, so they decide to grab a cup of tea before dinner, choosing a restaurant near Dupont Circle. It is a little…
“Life itself has no meaning,” Joseph Campbell wrote. “However, each of us has meaning, and we bring it to life.” I like the paradigm shift here: meaning moves from the outside to the inside. It’s just that sometimes, we lose…
In the movie Walk the Line, Johnny Cash auditions for Sam Phillips. He is hoping for a record deal. He is playing an uninspired and insipid version of a gospel hymn. And Phillips tells him no. When Cash demands a reason, Phillips says, "Because I don't believe you."…
I was born and raised Baptist. The kind of Baptist that flinches when the words ritual or sacrament are mentioned, tainted as they were, by profane Catholicism. (But then again, we didn’t know what the words meant, only that anything…
I spent the weekend leading a retreat at the Franciscan Renewal Center in Scottsdale, Arizona. A sanctuary in the desert. The retreat, Real People. Real Communication. You know the adage: Relationships wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the…
