As I indicated in my last entry, my therapist and I have been digging into the roots of why it's so difficult for me to "put myself out there" with my spiritual direction practice and associated activities, even though I've been getting nothing but positive affirmations on my path and my insights fo...

My ordination was February 14th.Today is the first day since then that my energy has felt normal.That's quite probably the longest high I've ever been on.Somewhat to my surprise, I'm not crashing.I should probably thank the daily magical-energy practices I've been doing. As things settle out, I'm aw...

A member of our parish pastoral council shared this prayer at our last meeting: Almighty God,look upon the face of Himwho is the eternal High Priest,and have compassion on your priests in today's world.Remember that they are but weak and frail human beings.Stir up in them the grace of their vocation...

This next section of Luther’s THE SMALL CATECHISM is controversial to non-Lutherans, though I wonder what they do with John 20:22-23. Confession and absolution is simply a personal application of the Gospel. It is very powerful in giving pastoral care to someone in need of God’s grace. N...

From CathNews: Polish priests want to marry Most Polish priests favour an end to celibacy and twelve percent say they are already in a relationship with a woman, a survey has found. The research has dealt a blow to the country’s reputation as a champion of traditional Catholic values, the UK T...

Iftin's first graduating class! Back Row: Leila, Hawa, Samiya, Faiza, Zahra, Safiya and Falastin. Front Row: Khadija and Aisha. The teacher's tent! Erica, Zahra and Nelius at the graduation ceremony held in the Eastleigh Community Centre's vocational training square on Friday morning, February 27th....

I've been keenly aware that I haven't posted much of substance here in quite some time. The tides of my life have been dominated by the kinds of spiritual work and experiences that I don't usually express on unfiltered entries, and there's been an erotic element which I also tend to veil here. But p...

The Holy Scriptures undeniably describe faith as the only thing necessary for salvation.  They also teach that good works cannot justify a person before God or contribute in the least toward the attainment of salvation.  The Old Testament says that Abram ‘believed the Lord, and He counted it...

Well, it's now been 5 days since I got back from my annual retreat (see previous blog posts); 5 days since, like Peter, James + John in the account of the Transfiguration, Jesus invited me (not that I had much choice! :-) to come back down the mountain into the "world" and share with others the grac...

The last few days we’ve been having some occasionally contentious discussion about where marriage fits in with the church and the state. I had started to worry that if even Christians don’t know what marriage is, how it is constituted, and how it is governed, how is it going to be possib...