There was a time when the questions caused me a lot of agony, when the diversity of spiritualities and religions worldwide caused confusion and doubt. How could there be such a wide variety of religions and spiritualities throughout the world? What is The Truth? Am I am fool for being a Christian — a committed…
St. Francis loved Christmas. He loved it so much that in the little village of Greccio, Italy, on a craggy hillside in 1223, he reenacted the nativity. He was not really a big words, intellectual guy. Francis liked to jump in with his whole heart and body. So the story goes that he invited the…
It’s indisputable that today’s signs of the times point to heartache, injustice, division and confusion. The truth seems to be debatable. The persecutions of the little ones — from immigrant children, refugees, victims of natural disasters and targets of sexual assault; those who are on the margins — often are the ones who bear the…
“Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” This quote, attributed to author and theologian Ian Maclaren, has been tossed around a lot. I think I first saw it memed on Facebook and most recently I heard it on Krista Tippet’s On Being. It is simple and straightforward and frankly, kind enough,…
I am on pilgrimage now, in Italy. I arrived Monday evening and started having physical reactions right away. As I was leaving the Rome airport and looking around at the vegetation, it crossed my mind that the landscape I was seeing probably would have been familiar to St. Francis of Assisi, plus many other holy…
Father of feasting, fasting and fun: your ecstatic love of God still feeds us with inspiration, devotion, commotion, communion, so we gather up sticks and play violins. we kneel in the dirt praying praising, remembering our mother earth, our sister water, the fox our brother Jesus a babe, born so simple in a barn, poor-…
At the high school where I work we begin we begin every day with prayer. On Fridays the entire school says the Peace Prayer of St. Francis. The words weren’t written by St. Francis. The Peace Prayer of St. Francis was written in the 1900s and became popular during World War II. The words remain…
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