A Daily Lent

Dinnerless Camels Saturday after the Resurrection – April 18, 2020 Transformation does not happen by an act of the will. Responding to an altar call is important for some, but is certainly not the end as much as a new beginning. Benchmark life-events may help nurture us, but one-time events do not have the force to shift the deeply ingrained patterns within us. There are no quick fixes in the Christian spiritual life, no short-cuts to an adult spirituality. Rather, we must take care to feed the inner self, to nourish the soul, to give care to that which is at our center, for this inner self will emerge in the world as a transforming presence. We cannot expect ourselves to live differently in the world if we do not attend to this inward dimension of life. For example, in order not to be overwhelmed by a global pandemic, we must be intentional about ingesting spiritual nourishment that will give us resources to keep us from being overwhelmed by the pandemic flood. We have to ea...

The Sunshine School of Piety Thursday after the Resurrection – April 16, 2020 The popular prophets of contemporary culture are not those who tell the truth – which is the hallmark of a true prophet – but those who say what their followers want to hear. Religious leaders, political leaders, leaders of commerce . . . most anyone can fall into this kind of cheerleading . . . another version of dressing up a pig in lipstick. We notice this all around us, even in the midst of a global pandemic . . . some who say things are not really that bad (try selling that to 28,593 families in the United States and 138,487 families around the world who have lost loved ones to COVID-19) or who advocate sacrificing people’s health and lives for the good of economic factors (Capitalism as the greatest good!). In the excerpt below, Evelyn Underhill uses the ominous phrase, “ the sunshine school of piety ,” calling it a “charmingly optimistic outlook.” How apropos is that to our current times? G...

Inner Resources Monday of the Second Week of Lent - March 9, 2020 We all carry within us inner resources we have turned away from or that we do not yet know. A part of the spiritual journey is discovering these hidden, undeveloped resources lying latent within us. I find that most persons distrust their own inner resource to a great degree. We may trust someone else’s inner resources, but we can’t bring ourselves to trust our own. We cannot believe, at a deep, inner level, that we could really be entrusted with the precious treasure of God’s life within us. Elizabeth O’Connor uses a descriptive image for this distrust. First, she affirms the transforming power welling up from within us like “springs of living water.” But then, she says we spend our time “off drinking at wells that serve for a time, but leave us anxious because we so quickly thirst again.” These other wells may satisfy us for a time, but ultimately they leave us thirsty . . .until we learn to drink the springs o...