Prayers in Winter

[“ . . . and looking up to heaven with a deep sigh, (Jesus) said to (a deaf man hardly able to speak), Ephphatha! that is, ‘Be opened!’” (Mark 7:34).] O Lover, I frequently...

[“How lovely are Your dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! My soul yearns and longs for the courts of the Lord; my body and soul sing for joy to the living God. . ....

O Lover, Only in my most recent re-reading of the unabridged diary of Etty Hillesum (1914-1943) have I been seized by her use of the term “undercurrent.” I first noted the image in her...

[“Do not cast me off in the time of old age; do not forsake me when my strength fails. . . .And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake...

[“God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction. . . .The highest and most perfect thing that a person can let go is that he lets...

[“You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth or in the water under...

O Lover, In my own lifetime stunning advances in cosmology and astrophysics have given rise to the inter-related terms “deep space” and “deep time.” That adjective is employed in response to the hitherto unimaginable...

O Lover, In the genre of Renaissance Christian mystics Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510) is distinguished from most others: she was the first married Christian woman to leave a mystical paper trail; engaged in all...

[“We need a new God.” This statement is attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ (1881-1955) by Georgetown University’s John Haught in the major bio documentary “Teilhard: Visionary Scientist” which appeared in May of...

[“With his whole being (David) loved his Maker and daily had his praises sung . . .” (Sirach 47:8). The Book of Sirach was written in Hebrew by Yeshua ben Sira in Jerusalem (c.180...