Category: Wisdom Traditions

Longing

I remember some time ago I visited a very wonderful home for old people. There were about forty people there and they had everything, but they were all looking toward the door. There was not…

Today’s One-Liner (#217)

Everything depends on these words: “I will” or”I will not.”  –Mother Teresa, Everything Starts from Prayer: Meditations on Spiritual Life for People of All Faiths, selected and Arranged by Anthony Stern, 42

Conscience Thunders

King summoned the bold protest of ancient sources—“Today we particularly need the Hebrew prophets”—whose words had goaded the movement past fear and silence. “They did not believe that conscience is a still, small voice,” he…

Today’s One-Liner (#216)

“I’m not interested in criticizing Sheriff Clark, I’m interested in converting Sheriff Clark!” –Hosea Williams, quoted in Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968

Today’s One-Liner (#215)

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;  in the heavens you have made them, precious and beautiful.  –Saint Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Sun, translated by Bill Barrett from the Umbrian…

Perfect Joy

ONCE when St. Francis was coming from Perugia to Santa Maria degli Angeli with Friar Leo in the winter, and the very great cold vexed him sore, he called Friar Leo, who was going before,…

From Rules to Virtue

Reimagining the moral life through the prism of the Beatitudes takes us from rules to virtues: from a rule-centered idea of morality to a virtue-centered idea of morality. The basic question changes from “How far…

Celerity of the Saints

St Francis Solano, when under the impetus of love, would move like the wind so that no one could keep pace with him. On Christmas, a friar caught sight of him rushing along carrying some…