The smell of incense permeates throughout a church or meditation room, filling the space with its essence. We breathe it in and it becomes part of us. In the same way the atmosphere we inhabit, our thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, influence everything around us, as we see in Psalm 141 – incense. Psalm 141 Psalm 141 […]
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Psalm 132 – remember David, is a tribute to the great king of Israel, the humble shepherd who led a nation, from whose lineage came the child, Jesus. Author to many of the Psalms, there is much we can learn from David. Psalm 132 Another song of ascents, Psalm 132 begins by calling all to […]
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Chances are you’ve had a dream like mine, one featuring a snake or other reptile. Snakes are one of the most common animals in dreams, counting among the top three to five dream animals. What do they mean? For me, defanging death! Snakes in dreams There was a snake in the dream, a small one […]
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Psalm 2 begins with the word, why – “Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?” A good question, one that is relevant today. Why, indeed. The Psalms pose many questions to us. Let’s look at Psalm 2 – why? Psalm 2 – The Messiah As I’ve been reflecting on this Psalm, […]
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This year for Christmas, our pastor gave parishioners rosaries he had brought back from his visit to the Holy Land. The rosaries were made by nuns out of wood from trees from there. I grabbed my rosary that night and said, “I’ve got a piece of the Holy Land!” The Rosary I’ve long given up […]
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We love our royals, don’t we? This speaks to the popularity of TV shows such as “The Crown” and all of the media attention around royal weddings. We are fascinated by the spectacle of people who are somehow set apart from the rest of us from birth, born of royal stock. Have you ever thought […]
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There is a new sense of time that can come with age: gero-transcendence, or climbing over, transcending, age. Memories of past events from childhood seem like only yesterday. They are as real now as when they first happened. You can hold the past and present together in a new way you couldn’t before. The veil […]
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“When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away. . . I acknowledged my sin . . . then thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin.” (Psalm 32:3-5) It’s been said that confession is good for the soul, but the writer of Psalm 32 would say it is good for the body as […]
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Who are the pariahs of our times? Who do we run from? Perhaps victims of AIDS who are considered unclean? Perhaps those disfigured by war that we don’t want to look at because it upsets us? Or stroke survivors who struggle to create a new normal after the debilitating effects of this attack on their […]
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Psalm 16 is a psalm of confident, quiet trust in God. After all of the big events of Holy Week and Easter, it’s nice to have some time for quiet reflection. Psalm 16 invites us to do this. The writer entrusts his life to God, “Preserve me, O God, for in thee I take refuge […]
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