A Blog by LeRoy Friesen
O Lover, My periodic inclination to “play god” notwithstanding, I am a finite, a creature, one not self-generating, self-sustaining, or self-culminating. This means, among other things, that I am delimited, whether bedazzlingly or confiningly,...
O Lover, Most of us begin movement into more intentional faith for reasons strongly laced with self-interest, whether to escape gehénna, address existential meaninglessness, or respond to aging anxieties. In the early phases this...
[Powers, Richard, The Overstory (NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018 [Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2019]).] [“I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree. . . .Poems are...
[“O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” (I Cor 15:55)] O Lover, In my eighty-fourth year, I live with ample awareness of mortality. The relentless waning of somatic and...
[“(God) brought things into being in order that (God’s) goodness might be communicated to creatures, and be represented by them; and because (God’s) goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, (God) produced...
[“You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped. You were too strong for me, and You triumphed. . . . If I say, ‘I will not mention God, nor speak any...
O Lover, In this summer of ’23 I have been becoming more familiar with the theme of advaíta (neither-two-nor-one, non-seconded, non-dualism) from the Hindu Vedantic tradition. Bernard McGinn in his Modern Mysticism guided me...
[“God is a being than which none greater can be imagined. A being that necessarily exists in reality is greater than a being that does not necessarily exist” (Anselm [c.1033-1109], Proslógium).] O Lover, My...
[“And Mary said, . . . ‘may it be done to me according to Your word’” (Lk 1:38). “And (Jesus) said, ‘Abba, Father, . . . not what I desire, but what You (do)’”...
[“The eyes of all wait upon You, and You give them their food in due season. You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing” (Ps 145:15-16). Driven from his Mannheim...