by Guy Sayles | Jan 21, 2009 |
Having grown up in Atlanta in the 1960s and 1970s, I experienced the currents and crosscurrents of fear, prejudice, promise and hope that were part of the civil rights movement in the south. I remember how mesmerized I was by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (I tried, as a...
by Guy Sayles | Jan 15, 2009 |
On Wednesday evenings, I am leading a series of studies/reflections I’m calling “Recovering Your Life: Everyday Spirituality and the Twelve Steps.” My basic claim is that the recovery movement, rooted in the remarkably practical and insightful wisdom...
by Guy Sayles | Jan 5, 2009 |
In his new book, Living Gently in a Violent World (coauthored by Stanley Hauerwas), Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche, a network of communities which include people with and without intellectual disabilities, writes about what happened to him when he first entered...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 28, 2008 |
In many ways, my favorite week of the year is this last one. It feels like a pause between the rush of Christmas and the press to get the new year off to a meaningful and productive start. The pace is blessedly slower and saner. I have a brief break from preparing...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 23, 2008 |
This past Sunday, I said that the only Christmas gift any of us truly and really wants is to be loved. We ache to be fully known, graciously accepted, and tenderly cherished. We want to feel safe, nurtured, and at home somewhere, at least in our own skin. We yearn to...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 16, 2008 |
Richard Rohr, in the collection of reflections I am reading this Advent season, writes:Several years ago when I was in Nicaragua, I asked a man if he had time, and he said, “I have the rest of my life,” and smiled. Who of us would possibly say that? That...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 9, 2008 |
This Advent season, I am pondering some of the implications of the incarnation–of the wonder and mystery of God’s choosing to become most fully known to us in the limits and glories of a human life, the life of Jesus. I said to our deacons last night that...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 2, 2008 |
One of my practices this Advent season is reading daily reflections from Richard Rohr’s book, Preparing for Christmas. Rohr is a Catholic priest and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. He is a provocative and creative thinker,...
by Guy Sayles | Nov 26, 2008 |
Thanksgiving is upon us, but some of us are not feeling as grateful as we think we should feel. We recognize an obligation to be grateful, but that recognition does not, by itself, make us feel grateful. Telling us we ought to feel grateful when we don’t is like...
by Guy Sayles | Nov 20, 2008 |
When psychiatrist and writer Robert Coles was still in medical school, he had a fifthenn year old, patient, Phil, who was suffering from polio. Both of the Phil’s parents were dead: his father had been killed in WWII, and his mother had died in an automobile accident....
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