Benedictine Oblates Blog

It happened again the other day, this time when I was reading Psalm 24 in morning lectio. At the words, “Fling wide the gates, open the ancient doors, and the Glorious Liberator will come in!”

The image that flashed into my mind: a large cat, strolling tail up in through the flung open doors of the Temple. Continue Reading »

I’m tired.  I’m usually tired after Easter, but it seems like I’m more tired than normal this year.  There are plenty of reasons, even more than the regular demands and activities of a church musician during the Easter season. This winter brought a full load of family crises as well. Still doesn’t the reality of Easter bring new power to overcome the stresses of life? Both the good and the ill…and stress does wear both garments. Continue Reading »

Tags: Diarmuid O'Murchu, Easter, John Polkinghorne, Max Planck, physics, resurrection, Tielhard de Chardin

Along our Christian journeys there are times when we are drawn into a conversion of perspective about what faith asks of us. One such time for me happened in 1990 while I was sitting in the office of Medardo Gomez, the Lutheran Bishop of El Salvador. Continue Reading »

Rights. This week, the right to “free”contraception has been the big news. That discussion assumes the right to have sex any time we want to and with whomever we want. Of course, men have exercised these rights since the beginning of time, and women, till the 20th century, were left to worry about (or not) pregnancy among themselves. Continue Reading »

Because Psalm 24 is one of the psalms we read every day for a whole week at a stretch, this past week I decided not to follow my usual temptation to skip it after one day, but to keep reading it first each morning and see what I saw differently by doing this.

The first thing I noticed was how the earth’s foundation in God is not visible to the naked eye and lies below the motion and fluidity of our lives:

“The earth and everything in it — the world and all who live in
it –belong to YHWH. YHWH built it on the deep waters,
laying its foundations in the ocean depths.” Continue Reading »

The letters O.S.B. after a name don’t usually suggest radical thinking to me.  My mistake. Continue Reading »

Tags: Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, Virgil Michel