by Guy Sayles | Feb 3, 2009 |
In a recent Christian Century (January 13, 2009), I read an excerpt from an interview with poet Christian Wiman. Wiman returned to his childhood faith after many years of searching and wandering. When he did, some people met that return with suspicion and wondered if...
by Guy Sayles | Jan 27, 2009 |
One of life’s most healing and simplest gifts is silence. In one way, I can claim it easily: get away from the blaring TV, turn off the cellphone and the radio, shut down the computer, and get some distance from the buzz and hum of activity. It’s what...
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,...
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