A Place Called Bethel
[“Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.’ He was terrified and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none...
Prayers in Winter Blog
On Holding and Folding
[“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird (‘dress’) yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone...
Confession
O Lover, I confess that I have moments when I wonder whether You and/or I are an illusion; whether religion and spirituality are mere human projections fueled by fear of finitude in general, mortality...
On Death and Dying
O Lover, I still recall the gist of musings long ago by a colleague of mine in the context of a graduate student palaver: “I am more at peace with the certainty of my...
Hodie Revisited
O Lover, In last week’s post pondering Your presence decades ago in the hearing of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Hodie Christus natus Est I failed to accentuate a theme which has since refused to go...
Hodie
[Ralph Vaughn Williams (1872-1958), Hodie Christus Natus Est (solos/choral/orchestral cantata in 16 movements).] O Lover, It was thirty-seven years ago this week. I was driving truck in what would become in retrospect the seam...
Forell Revisited
[“Day by day / Day by day / Oh Dear Lord / Three things I pray / To see thee more clearly / Love thee more dearly / Follow thee more nearly / Day...
Beyond Transaction (11/25/25)
O Lover, In an era of metastasizing capitalism it is not surprising that commodification is widespread. Whether in the arts and culture, data and knowledge, or values and morality, efforts are expended to monetize...
The Real Presence
O Lover, Amid the silence of morning prayer I recently found myself unusually at rest in Your Presence. In that brief interval I was not thinking or petitioning, yearning or striving, but simply at...
The Lover as Destination
[“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment” (Mt 22:37-8).] O Lover, Having experienced...
In Praise of Contingency
[“The mystery of the Word’s descent is meant to ‘amaze’ the Soul into loss of self and perfect obedience to the Father’s will” (Bernard McGinn regarding Marguerite of Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Annihilated...