Jesus is once again asking us to look at ourselves, to be self-reflective. It’s as if he saying to John, “Don’t you worry about that other guy. You worry about yourself.” He’s asking us to look within. The greatest stumbling blocks are not outside us but within us: anger and revenge, the judgments we make of others, prejudice, our desire to get ahead and be number one, the need to be right, our unwillingness to listen, the assumption that we know more and better than another, living as if our way is the only and right way, pride, fear, being exclusionary, our busyness, lies, gossip, our desire for power and control. These, and a thousand other things like them, are what cause others and us to fall.
Tag: Interior Life
A Sower Went Out To Sow – A Sermon on Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
So here’s what I am wondering. Might you and I be sowers of seed? When we hear or read this parable we are pretty quick to judge ourselves or others as one of the four types of ground: the beaten path, the rocky ground, thorny terrain, or good soil. But have you ever thought of yourself as the sower in today’s parable?
Share this:
Call to the Inner Life – Remembering Evelyn Underhill
Today the Episcopal Church remembers Evelyn Underhill. This post is from three years ago. However, the truth of Underhill’s words echo loudly. The Church needs more voices like hers and more lives, lay and ordained, like she describes.
Sometime around 1931 Evelyn Underhill wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang (1928-1942), about the inner life of the clergy. Her concern was that the multiplicity of the clergy’s duties had 
diminished some priests’ grounding in a life of prayer.
Underhill’s concerns are as relevant today, perhaps more so, as they were when she wrote the letter. However, we should not limit her concerns and proposals to only the clergy. They are equally applicable to the laity. The life of the Church and the life of humanity, lay or ordained, must begin within and arise out of a life of prayer.
The following are excerpts from her letter:
- “Call the clergy as a whole, solemnly and insistently to a greater interiority and cultivation of the personal life of prayer.”
- “The real failures, difficulties and weaknesses of the Church are spiritual and can only be remedied by…
View original post 237 more words
Share this:
Spiritual Formation – The Missional Challenge and Future of the Church
I suspect that many parishes, priests, and lay persons may not consider spiritual formation as a means of or opportunity for outreach. Instead, parish outreach tends to focus on corporal needs such as hunger, homelessness, poverty, health care, visiting the…
Read More Spiritual Formation – The Missional Challenge and Future of the Church
Share this:
Evelyn Underhill – Call to the Inner Life
Sometime around 1931 Evelyn Underhill wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang (1928-1942), about the inner life of the clergy. Her concern was that the multiplicity of the clergy’s duties had diminished some priests’ grounding in…
Read More Evelyn Underhill – Call to the Inner Life
Share this:
The Interior Life – To Ascend We Must First Dive
The ladder to the Kingdom is hidden within you, and within your soul. Dive down into yourself, away from sin, and there you will find the steps by which you can ascend. - St. Isaac of Syria For most of…
Read More The Interior Life – To Ascend We Must First Dive
Interrupting the Silence 