Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the world. Yours are the feet with which Christ is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which Christ is to bless […]
Does Church Matter?
As I have come to experience God’s abundance this past month, I have also sensed that my faith community, my Quaker meeting, isn’t a natural place for me to explore abundance. (In fact, I almost wrote a piece entitled “Would someone please give my Meeting some Prozac?” before I determined that my musings on that belonged in a different forum.) As […]
Two T. Rexes and a Blankie
Here is a story about community: One day a couple of years ago, I was in a bad mood because my daughters had left toys and stuff all over the house, once again. I even found their toys and stuff in the bathroom, and I was starting to get very angry. As I bent down to pick up the toys by the […]
The Loneliness of True Religion
As I met with my study group yesterday, a group of women that meets monthly to help each other discern how each one of us is called to live in this age of inequality, I was struck by the fact that not one of us felt encouraged by our own church/Meeting in that process. When I had my own epiphany […]
Be Careful What You Pray for…
On 12/5 I wrote about my new spiritual discipline of practicing gratitude and praying that my desire for things that aren’t simple would fade away, that those things would become undesirable to me. I also prayed that I would become more aware of God’s abundance in life. As many others do, I close my prayers by saying “amen” – let it be so. […]
Ruined for Life
The Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC) has as its informal slogan “Ruined for Life”. I love that phrase and appreciate that many of us are “ruined for life” without ever having been in JVC. What I like about the phrase is how amazingly intentional they are about creating a process of alienation in which a person with privilege is given an experience of what life is like for […]
Money, money, money…
I must confess that I started my work at the Recovery Cafe (see 12.5 blog entry) with some misgivings about the cliches that seem to me to emanate from 12 Step environments and all the Saturday Night Live-type routines that have grown out of them. Maybe the program is a bit simplistic and ritualized? Maybe as a Quaker […]
Gratitude
Every Tuesday for the past 4 weeks, I have co-facilitated an Ignatian Prayer Experience at the Recovery Cafe in downtown Seattle. Women and men who are in various stages of recovery from alcoholism, drug use, homelessness, and mental health challenges meet to support each other in the hard work required to stay on the journey towards healthy mind and spirit. Every […]
Recipe for Upside-Down World
I turned to Matthew 19 to look at the story in which Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. Then my Quaker seminary training reminded me to check the stories that came before and […]
Why Do Bad Things Happen?
Jurgen Moltmann spoke at Seattle University a few weeks ago about his 35 year old book called “The Crucified God”. One of the most moving moments was when Jurgen was asked whether God, as the author of all things, also is the author of suffering? His heartfelt answer, after all these years of reading, writing and praying, was “I don’t know. […]
Susanne Kromberg's Musings 