Category Archives: Awakening

Today is the last day of Advent. The past couple of years I’ve kept an Advent journal. Last year I was grateful to reach the end; this year it’s different. For a long time I identified as a seeker. I sought God or enlightenment. Happiness and inner peace? It doesn’t matter. Really I was searchingContinue reading “Advent Journal: The Last Day”

Notes on a Christian Vedanta I The Ass and the Heart are One I want to think about something Abhishiktananda said in Ascent to the Depths of the Heart. He said that Christianity could not possibly sugar out only “concern for one’s brothers” because that failed to fully compass “the experience that Jesus had ofContinue reading “Three Brief Essays on Abhishiktananda”

Differences appear, right? This shirt is blue, that one is red. Sunflowers are not bluets. When you fall into the lake, I don’t get wet. Differences are not a problem. The problem is when you and I say, “this difference is me.” When we talk about separation, that’s what we’re talking about – that subtleContinue reading “Advent Journal: A Piece of Bread”

Thaddeus visits briefly to say, stop trying to win an argument. Nobody cares. When I protest, he shrugs and disappears. Not my circus, not my monkeys, as the kids say. In holy circles I am just outside the perimeter of, identity is not what matters – Jesus’s or anybody else’s. You have to let itContinue reading “Advent Journal: Briefly and Gloriously Perfectly Clear”

There are phases to a life, like there are phases to the moon. Flavors to a season of writing, the way Halloween had a flavor as a child, or Christmas. In Advent, I am happy and a little reckless. When you know the way God is alive and Christ afoot, then the work changes. ItContinue reading “Advent Journal: The Way to Freedom for All of Us”

1 There was a sense that something big was going to happen, something important. Maybe even something miraculous. I was going to do this big thing, or the big thing was going to happen to me. Somehow I was integral to it. Its effects were going to be transformative, world-changing, definitely for the better. PeopleContinue reading “Advent Journal: How Lonely One Becomes in Victory”