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A Prayerful Environment
It’s summertime, and for many of us, summer means time at a beach somewhere. What a great place to pray! What a perfect place in which to blend our prayer with play. Might we allow ourselves to get...
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Take Inventory of Your Spaces
There’s a reason the Christian world, whether in a small Midwestern town in the U.S. or on the streets of Rome, is dotted with spaces meant for prayer. From earliest times, people on spiritual quests...
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Take This Soul and Make It Sing
A major premise of St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises is that we human beings were created by God, who creates good things out of love; thus we humans are most fulfilled when we live out the desires...
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Free at Last?
There’s a meditation in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius called “Three Classes of People,” which is designed to help us understand our attachments. Three people are given a great fortune, and...
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Allow God’s Gaze to Rest on You
Recently I led a half-day retreat for Directors of Religious Education at a nearby parish. These are the men and women who work hard all year through, helping to care for the faith of others. They are...
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Five Ways to Relate to Family Members Spiritually
It can be quite difficult to express personal spirituality in family situations that are not particularly friendly toward religion. Especially if a family has experienced religion as judgmental or...
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How Do I Identify the Work That Matters?
It can take awhile—sometimes many years—for a person to sort out all that she’s been taught, told, and in some cases manipulated to believe and value. Many people of faith must work through a period...
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Three Reasons It’s Hard to Be Still
We have been conditioned to feel guilty whenever we are not “productive.” Stillness, even for the purpose of rest or prayer, can feel like wasted time to someone who lives in a world that values...
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“Making” Sacred
Home is sacred space. It is also sacred time. Whether home is a physical location or a state of mind while we wander the globe, we have the power to make it sacred, to hold it in loving attention and...
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Three Prayers for a Better Workday
Let’s keep this simple. You’re going to work, and you have a lot of work to do, so let’s not pile on “spiritual practices”—just more stuff for you to do. It’s not wise to add more minutes to a day...
View ArticleBring-Your-Prayer-to-Work Day
Today, bring your prayer to work. I offer a few suggestions for how to do that in today’s reflection video. //www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGfhY5362rw
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Work That Matters
I used to get so frustrated at all the small, routine bits of work I must do just to maintain existence—cleaning, cooking, sorting/filing, and so on. But one day it occurred to me that maintenance...
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Let’s Talk about Dreams
When I speak of dreams here, I don’t mean the mind’s journeys while you’re sleeping. I refer to dreams—visions, imaginings—you have for yourself, for those you love, for your larger community. Dreams...
View ArticleThoughts on Dreaming
We are designed to dream; this impulse and ability is built into the wiring of our brains and the beating of our hearts. Sleep dreams happen on their own, but the dreams we consciously have for...
View ArticleA Dream to Pray
God, who creates me and who loves me, I open my thoughts to receive you. I open my heart to welcome you. I open my eyes to see your possibilities for me. I open my ears to listen more attentively to my...
View ArticleGifts You Can Offer
Today, please consider that you are a person brimming with gifts. Do you dare offer them to a world always in need of love and wisdom? Allow yourself to identify what you have to give....
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Saying Goodbye to One Chapter; Hello to Another
Happy autumn of 2015 to our Days of Deepening Friendship community! Some of you have been with us from the beginning, and some of you are new. I share this news with gratitude and a bit of sadness:...
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