Present Over Perfect

be seen, vinegar and all, and so I cut myself off from the healing oil, from the grounding. You have to ...

A Wide and Holy Space Try to keep your soul always in peace and quiet, always ready for whatever ou ...

ancient practices. He was reading voraciously, and spent hours walking up and down the side ...

asked me about the gathering, about what Aaron’s doing these days. My friend was raised Catholic but i ...

us about Sabbath. Even though most of us didn’t understand a word of Hebrew in the service, we were ...

Book of Common Prayer. I like feeling connected to something durable and beautiful, something ...

years. The new voices and influences that I’m learning from, the new reading and new practices are br ...

Daughter It seems to me that Christians, even more than anyone else, ought to be deeply grounded, livin ...

of work in the same way that Americans have begun engaging in yoga competitions—twisted-up ...

core of silence and substance, unshakable in the business of life. I listen more; I picture God’s heart, r ...

man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” As those words began to take r ...

Yellow Sky The sky turned yellow last night, and we watched the weather hour by hour, thunderstorms ...

Mary, and we meet on the second floor of a Jesuit retreat center bordered by horse farms. I slide my ...

of a child or the words of a friend or the color of the sky. The ideals and the tactile stuff of the world, ...

way that I didn’t allow myself to be taken care of by people, I didn’t know how to let myself be take ...

On Stillness I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong t ...

unlikeliest of places to find the healing we’ve been searching for all along. Why am I a writer, of al ...

with me back into the noise, like a secret. There’s a quiet place inside me that I bring with me ...

Stars What has led me here was not one snap-your-fingers, before-and-after change. Instead, ...

all my thoughts and feelings kind of person. While I want so deeply and desperately to live righ ...