The trouble with the godstuff is that you can spend an awful lot of time wrestling with things that make no apparent sense. Like this prayer exploration I’ve been tangling with after my friend Marcia asked me to pray for her before merrily tripping off on pilgrimage. Prayer has always been a mystery to me, which you Read more
Except for the severest of unbelievers, it is rare to find a person who does not relish a tale of spiritual transformation, an account of the soul’s progress from winter to spring. A favorite of mine from this genre involves Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, who is now doing Read more
The evolutionary laws of heredity and genetic mutation pose no conflict to the Catholic faith, the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences said during a meeting held to discuss the evolution of mankind. However, said Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the beginning of the universe — “the transition from nothing to being” — is not Read more
I read … “I am amazed how often I meet people who ‘once were Catholics’. You never ask why they left the church. There will be umpteen reasons why just as there are umpteen people. But millions have remained true to their Catholic faith.” Merepeka Raukawa-Tait in The Daily Post, March 19, 2013 I wondered Read more
I soooooooo don’t get it. John Main says, “Language may not be able to lead us into the ultimate communion but it is the atmosphere in which we first draw breath of consciousness.” I have spent more than fifty years acquiring language – a spiritual language, that is, not my native tongue – and suddenly Read more
After 75 years, Alcoholics Anonymous is facing a struggle over its spiritual basis. Has it become too God-focused and rigid? Or have some groups watered down its beliefs and methods? Six of the 12 steps prescribed by the organisation’s founders refer to God either explicitly or implicitly. Step three, for example, cites “a decision to Read more
Recently I viewed a YouTube video by Australian performance poetry artist, Joel McKerrow. “God Rid Me of God’ it was called. The poem explores the constraints we put on the nature of God; the shackles we use to confine God. Joel entreats that we stop shaping God in our own image: “God, rid me of Read more
A cracked voice, an empty bank account, a tour of duty. Who would have thought so much light could still get in? Leonard Cohen’s autumnal years have been afflicted, and his writing nuanced, by more than a simple awareness of his own mortality. The Canadian singer-songwriter spent most of the 1990s in a Zen monastery Read more
A warning from Pope Benedict XVI about lack of faith among Catholics in France has coincided with new research revealing a decline in fervour among Catholics in the United States and a weakening of belief among Catholics in Ireland. Speaking to visiting French bishops, the Pope described ignorance of religion, even “among the Catholic faithful”, Read more
If ‘organisation’ were a gift of the Holy Spirit, boy, would I be a saint by now. I’ve never been much good at speaking in tongues, prophecy or healing (read: not at all). But I have been labelled the “Queen of Spreadsheets” (rather Marian huh? I wonder if there is an ‘Our Lady Queen of Read more