Monday Merton Musings, December 5, 2011 Before We Can Become Gods We Must Be Men Thomas Merton contended that human beings have lost a great deal in modern, technological society. What we have gained in efficiency and productivity has, in many ways, sucked the humanity and spirituality from our inner beings. In this meditation from [...]
Resources for the Season
30 Nov by
This afternoon I thought I would pass along some links that might be of help to you or to someone you care about during this Advent and Christmas season. I am not going to suggest every possible resource out there, just a few good quality sites. Some provide daily readings, prayers, and other personal devotional [...]
Why Some Don’t Observe the Christian Year
29 Nov by
As regular readers of Internet Monk know, I am an enthusiastic proponent of following the Christian Year as a way of keeping our churches Jesus and Gospel-centered and as a salutary program for enabling individual Christians and congregations to become spiritually formed by the story of Christ. I am fully aware not everyone agrees. So [...]
Finding Ourselves in Jesus
25 Nov by
Finding Ourselves in Jesus Why We Observe the Christian Year • • • During this Advent season, I will be using Walter Wangerin Jr.’s book, Preparing for Jesus, for daily readings to prepare my heart for the celebration of Jesus’ birth. As I was looking at it the other day, I was taken immediately by [...]
The Cruelest Month
10 Nov by
Yesterday, the wind blew strong from the west, colder and more piercing as the day went by. The sky was a wild migration of stampeding clouds, many dark as slate and angry. Leaves blew everywhere. Color is thinning and soon the treetops will be as bare as an old man’s pate. All will be brown, [...]
Let the Saints Teach Us to Be Children
6 Nov by
Today is the day many Christian traditions celebrate All Saints’ Day (some celebrated earlier last week). On the first page of our church bulletin this morning were these words: “All Saints celebrates the baptized people of God, living and dead, who are the body of Christ. As November heralds the dying of the landscape in [...]
Hanging On…
21 Sep by
For awhile now, I have been feeling the need for a break of some kind. As I’ve written about some of the demanding situations involved in working on a hospice team, many of you have been kind enough to encourage me to remember to practice self-care, and you are right. The schedule of emotionally intense [...]
Ruth among the Writings
20 Jun by
By Chaplain Mike Ordinary Time Bible Study 2011 The Book of Ruth (1) During Ordinary Time this summer, we will have a weekly Bible study on the Book of Ruth. I think this especially appropriate, for Ruth is a story about ordinary people in ordinary settings, in and through whom God did extraordinary things. For [...]
Our Relational God
17 Jun by
By Chaplain Mike This Sunday upcoming is Trinity Sunday, the day that bridges the two main divisions of the Church Year. We have been walking through the life of Jesus from Advent to Pentecost since last November. Now, we begin the days of “Ordinary Time,” when we live out the faith daily as Christ’s church, [...]
Friday with the Fathers (5)
9 Apr by
By Chaplain Mike The Epistle of Barnabas is next on our list as we consider the works of the Apostolic Fathers, which are the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament itself. The main guide we are using for these studies is The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, by Michael W. Holmes. An [...]
