“Night signifies that which comes upon us and takes us out of our own control; [but] it announces that as the place of resurrection.”    ~ Rev. Iain Matthew Even though it is Spring, and the weather has turned lovely with crisp azure skies dappled with fluffy clouds above a backdrop of evergreening mountains, in my brain, it feels like 4:00 a.m. all the time. For those of you who are not addicts or alcoholics, 4:00 a.m. used to be the witching hour, the darkest point of the night for us.  It is that point when we had run out of drugs and alcohol, the bars were closed, and the ..read more

We are all asking questions right now, aren’t we?  How will we make it?  Can I survive? What will life look like next month much less next year? Are we asking the ‘right’ questions?  Are we thinking ‘big’ enough in these questions? The questions I am asking myself are fear-based, focusing more on what this pandemic will take away and strip down. But what if I shifted the narrative?  What if I asked what will this time we are living through accelerate in my life?  I am terrified of it stripping me of my accumulations rather than asking another question, another way: wil ..read more

Franciscan Sister Ilia Delio writes: [The Life of St. Francis] indicates to us that if we persevere in prayer we will find God in the center of our lives and the bitter will become sweet…however, if we stay on the plain of mediocrity then the bitter may remain bitter. To trust in the power of God’s grace through darkness, isolation, bitterness, and rejection is to be on the way to becoming prayer because it is the way to freedom in God. For prayer, that deep relationship of God breathing in us, requires change and conversion. And where there is change, there is the letting go of the old and t ..read more

Happy Easter to those who celebrate it; and Passover as well. Here we are, in strange days indeed, celebrating a day all about new beginnings, hope and resurrection and yet many of us are feeling far from that mindset.  In these days of quarantine, the ‘old’ world of immediate gratification has found a worthy foe: a pandemic forcing us all to some level of solitude.  And even though I am struggling hard vacillating ever so quickly between panic and despair, in the midst of all of this, I am afforded the time to slow down, breathe, and attune my being to God’s pervadingly loving Prese ..read more

I know it may sound insane for me to say this, but the days we are living through are neither good days nor bad days; they are just days.  The goodness and the badness of them is subjective, solely defined by where I am spiritually and how I am letting my external circumstances impact my inner world. We are all overwhelmed by the days, the circumstances and the unknown. Many are feeling overwhelmed by emotions, emotions that we may have spent a lifetime running from or judging. That has been my experience.  I am not only being overwhelmed by my emotions related to the recent changes of my life ..read more

People are feeling overwhelmed. People are feeling in the dark. We all seem to be groping around in the daylight of the Unknown. When I talk about darkness and the dark, it is synonymous with the Unknown, that aching feeling that lingers in our stomachs when we are not really sure if everything is or is going to be OK – that is the dark; that is the unknown. And if we are honest, we are all still somewhat afraid of the dark and the unknown. In fact, we assume darkness is negative or bad. We tend to focus only on the negative aspects of darkness – even defining as the absence of light. We assum ..read more

One of the greatest gifts of recovery has been getting to know myself — my wants, likes, pains, dislikes, hobbies, joys, etc.  In truth, I remind the people around me who helped me get clean and sober that their great gift to me was they gave me back to myself, so I, in turn, could give myself to others.  So, I say find yourself in recovery so you can give yourself away; find yourself so you can be yourself. So, with that, I give to you some practical mystical words from Rob Brezny on being yourself. Be Yourself You came into this world as a radiant bundle of exuberant riddles. You slipped int ..read more

Tsültrim Allione writes: “I was at a lunch with the Dalai Lama and five Buddhist teachers at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. We were sitting in a charming room with white carpets and many windows. The food was a delightful, fragrant, vegetarian Indian meal. There were lovely flower arrangements on the table. “We were discussing sexual misconduct among Western Buddhist teachers. A woman Buddhist from California brought up someone who was using his students for his own sexual needs. One woman said, ‘We are working with him with compassion, trying to get him to understand his motives for exploitin ..read more

What is the sound of God’s voice? Is it audible? In English? Or maybe Aramaic, Hebrew or Arabic? Is it discernable to the human ear?  I say it is. I say it is all of the above and much, much more. I say the sound of God’s voice is all around us. It is in the chirping of the birds at daybreak. It is in the soft cooing of a mother to a baby. It is in the agonizing weeping of sorrows and loss. It is in the rushing waters of rivers and streams. God’s voice is found in the hushed whispers of breezes dancing through the trees; in the rhythmic meter of little frogs singing in chorus at eventide fr ..read more

“We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just to be loved but to love…   -Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons People in recovery often talk about addiction as a disease of “More” – a nagging persistent hunger to fill a void.  I can say from my own life, even long before addiction became a part of my story, I felt this hunger.  Some call it the “God” hunger, others a byproduct of our addictive natures.  Me, well, I’m not one to think that all the “more” I hunger for is either negative or dan ..read more