GLIMPSES “It is not we who choose to awaken ourselves, but God Who chooses to awaken us.” – Thomas Merton “Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between the two my life flows.” -Nisargadatta We have moments when we experience or glimpse this oneness, this deep connection with God, with…

Father Thomas Keating defines Original Sin as “a way of explaining the universal experience of coming to full reflective self-consciousness without the inner conviction or experience of union with God.”[i] For Keating, this is another way of naming the human condition. Simply put, sin refers to the separate self, the sense of being disconnected from…

An excerpt from the Chapter 1 – Oneness “We are full of paradise without knowing it.” – Thomas Merton “They look at life which never lost the communion with the divine ground of all life, and they look at a life which never lost the union of love with all beings.” Paul Tillich “Truth is…

One spiritual master still with us, Jim Finley, who spent his early adult years with the late Thomas Merton, has helped provide structure for this book. In our conversations together, he helped to clarify a certain understanding that the great mystics of all traditions have seen consistently. When I use the term mystic, I do…

From Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation, the Perennial Tradition is the name given to the core teachings of all major religions and indigenous peoples: 1) There is a Divine Reality underneath and inherent in the world of things. 2) There is in the human soul a natural capacity, similarity to, and longing for…

Due to 2 major moves in 1 year, I have vowed to begin my website reflections again, so here goes… “And be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.” Ephesians 4:32 I read this passage the other day and reflected on the powerful message this calls us…

“We are met in a great task when we meet in worship, no less than to realize the Divine Presence and to create an atmosphere in which that Presence and Power can touch us into fuller life. “Once we remember this, we cannot but approach the occasion with reverent humility and the desire that nothing…

“There is only God.” I was reflecting on a theme from our faculty Ignatian Evening last week: “Finding and Serving God in others.”  I remembered a 3 stage process that Father Thomas Keating talks about in our spiritual journey.  In my own words, paraphrasing him from memory, it goes something like this: We discover that…

Reflections on Liam – March 5th, 2009 – 6 months – His first 1/2 Birthday Mary and I are up late.  It’s 1:47 am and Liam is sick with a cold and cough.  I walk him in the Ergo (baby carrier) back and forth through our condo until he falls asleep on my chest and in my…