In the midst of the messiness of raising three children under 5, God is there. In the balancing of the checkbook, God is there. In the waiting room of the hospital, God is there. In the boring meeting, God is there. In the frustrating traffic jam, God is there. Lent might be a time when we can be attentive to the place where we are, and attentive to God.
A door opens in the centre of our being and we seem to fall through it into immense depths which, although they are infinite, are all accessible to us; all eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact.
St. Paul’s in Walnut Creek, Calif. took an interesting route away from carbon power. The chair of the environment committee there started a business called Sonlight Solar, LLC, to provide backing to a project that would convert the church to solar power. Inspired by an October 2006 viewing of An Inconvenient Truth, parishioners found themselves searching for a way to make the solar conversion happen.
Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, one of 11 accredited seminaries in the Episcopal Church, has decided to stop offering a residential Masters of Divinity degree, and to enter a period of discernment about its future.
Andrew Brown notes with some alarm the increasing stridency of voices calling for the United Kingdom to act to fully separate the Anglican Church from the Government. Such an action would lead to an increase in intolerance and prejudice in English society he argues in a column published today.
John-David Schofield has written a letter to the Rev. Canon Brian Cox and the Rev. Canon Robert Moore, warning them that they are not to meddle in the affairs of the diocese. He paints them into a rhetorical corner, saying that if the argument was San Joaquin couldn’t remove itself from the Episcopal Church, that he and the diocese are still in TEC and that the canons’ presence was intrusive–but if they had legitimately left the diocese, then they were still intruding into another province’s diocese.
At times, God seems to be silent and withdrawn. Whatever intimacy and friendship with God we have known disappears, and there is only a void. It is a time when we may face severe temptation, when we may have to cling to God in faith and love, even when there seems to be no sound basis for either.
One of the pieces of our Lenten journey is cultivating the art of discernment, listening for the voice of God in the wilderness of our hearts, trying to sense the divine will. Discernment is part of our ongoing conversion,
Many areas of the world are experiencing a decline in religious belief and practice. And where religions are flourishing, they are also generally evolving—very often in ways that allow them to fit more easily into secular societies, and that weaken them as politically disruptive forces.
Do participatory management practices result in open societies, or are the businesses that use them simply more abundant in healthy, peaceable communities? And do positive changes in society reflect enlightened business practice or the impact of politically motivated changes induced by organized labor and other social movements?