by Guy Sayles | May 17, 2010 |
Montezuma, GA, the little town where I once lived and worked, is only a few miles from Andersonville, site of the dreadful Confederate prison-camp where Union soldiers were kept in horrific conditions. The air is thick with the ghosts of suffering and hostility, but...
by Guy Sayles | May 10, 2010 |
From years and years now of conversation and counseling and from my own experience as a son and a parent, I am convinced that very few of us live with any active regret about material things our parents could not or would not provide for us. Hardly anyone grieves the...
by Guy Sayles | May 3, 2010 |
One of the fine pleasures of a few days off (which I had last week) was, at last, having the time and space to savor Marilynne Robinson’s novel Home. Robinson’s two earlier novels, Housekeeping and Gilead (to which Home is intricately related), are among...
by Guy Sayles | Apr 21, 2010 |
At the heart of all genuine faith and all authentic change and conversion, whether sudden or gradual, dramatic or quiet, is humility. Spiritual growth and maturity require us to acknowledge that there are limits to our own strength, goodness, and knowledge. We need to...
by Guy Sayles | Apr 14, 2010 |
In his novella “Remembering,” Wendell Berry includes this moving poem/prayer that I often have in mind as I move to the pulpit or lectern to speak or pick up a pen or press my fingers to a keyboard to write: Heavenly Muse, Spirit who brooded on The world...
by Guy Sayles | Apr 5, 2010 |
Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple tells the story of Celie, a poor black woman whose husband, Albert, is violent and abusive. Albert isolated Celie from her family, censoring the mail so that she never heard from them. Celie’s sister, Nettie, a missionary in...
by Guy Sayles | Mar 29, 2010 |
You realize, don’t you?, how much ambivalence most of us have about leaders and leadership. Warren Bennis, for many years president of the University of Cincinnati and a noted expert on leadership, wrote a fine but troubling book a few years ago entitled Why Leaders...
by Guy Sayles | Mar 17, 2010 |
All is not well between us and time. Time flies when you’re having fun; but, at the best moments, it seems that time stands still. But, the best moments aren’t necessarily the easiest moments, so that some people remember hard times as good times. Most of those who...
by Guy Sayles | Mar 11, 2010 |
Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th Century priest who founded the Jesuit order and whose Spiritual Exercises have guided people, for centuries now, into a deeper and more richly imaginative praying of the Scriptures, wrote these fine words about love:Many people think love...
by Guy Sayles | Mar 5, 2010 |
Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’...
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