Advent

Carolyn Myss, the medical intuitive who writes and lectures about why people don’t heal, flew to Russia a few years ago to give some lectures. Everything that could go wrong did—flights were canceled or overbooked, connections missed, her reserved room at the hotel given to someone else. She kept trying to be a good sport, but […]

Mary had one Annunciation. Joseph had two because, well—in the spiritual realm, men need two shots. His first annunciation did not come via angel. It was his fiancé announcing a big problem. God had told her all about it, directly, and he had to hear it through her. His job, it seems, is to go […]

Saturdays are poem days in “The Dawn From On High” Advent series. If You Want Ifyou wantthe Virgin will come walking down the roadpregnant with the holy,and say,“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,my time is so close.” Then, under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublimeintimacy, […]

In 2010 Forest Fenn, an art dealer and former Air Force fighter pilot, wrote a self-published memoir entitled, The Thrill of the Chase. In it he announced that he had buried a lockbox full of gold coins and nuggets, precious gems, and artifacts worth over $2 million. Every buried treasure has to have a mysterious clue, […]

I’ve never known a soul to cry at an Easter hymn, but many of us cry singing Advent and Christmas songs and carols. A friend was just telling me about the Lessons & Carols service she attended the first Sunday of Advent. “When the choir sang ‘People Look East,’ I started to cry—I always cry […]

As much as we like good news, we have a hard time believing it. The Hebrew prophets are often remembered for their fiery judgements, but not today. The Jews have just been frogmarched out of their country, held captive in Babylon. Jerusalem, their holy city, is in ruins. Their temple has been destroyed. And in […]

A priest goes on retreat to a monastery. He really needs his time away. He gets to the monastery and things go pretty well, except for this bothersome guy named John who prays next to him in the chapel every day and is always in the refectory for meals. John was annoying, not the kind […]

Here is the little door,lift up the latch, oh lift! These are the opening lines of a Christmas poem by Frances Chesterton (G.K. Chesterton’s wife), put splendidly to music in the Herbert Howell anthem, “Here is the little door.” I put that anthem on my Advent playlist, yet I’d never really heard those words. Then […]