The Need is the Call – What if I Can’t See a Way to Use My Gifts?
What if I Can't See a Way to Use My Gifts? When I dump out the 500 pieces of a new puzzle, the colors and shapes all jumble together. All the pieces are there but the picture those pieces will form is still fragmented. Gradually, as I work, the nuances of color,...
The Need is the Call – Responding to the Suffering We See With Jesus
Responding to the Suffering we see with Jesus “Everything you need is in the room.” “Trust the process.” These are the two sentences I have lived and learned with for the past 12 months of Chaplaincy training. Much of our work with hospital patients is entering...
The Need is the Call – Overcoming Overwhelm
Overcoming the Overwhelm: When a Call Feels Like Too Much As people of faith, we have no shortage of spiritual figures to whom we can look as models of hearing and heeding a call from God. There are countless examples (some of my personal inspirations below in “Go...
The Need is the Call – How Does God Want Me To Use My Gifts?
How Does God Want Me To Use My Gifts? As a high school student, I competed in extemporaneous speaking on our speech team. Most of my classmates were intimidated by ‘extemp’! On the day of a competition, participants had one hour to prepare an original speech based...
The Need is the Call – Do I Have a Unique Call to Respond?
Do I Have a Unique Call to Respond? How Do I Hear it/Find it? In the Gospel of John (7:25-30) Jesus makes a concerted effort to avoid Judea, because that is where the religious authorities are trying to find a way to kill him – and he knows it. His apostles attend...
Resisting Jesus – Resisting Surrender
I’ll be honest, Palm Sunday, more precisely “Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion,” is my least favorite Sunday of the whole liturgical year. I resist as we fumble our way through Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem and then are immersed in the darkest hours of his human...
Resisting Jesus – Resisting Healing
Before sitting down to write this post, I awoke to a post on Facebook by a family friend on the passing of her mom. I see these posts all the time now, it’s something about being over 40… friends start losing parents and other mentors a bit more frequently. With...
Resisting Jesus – Resisting Call to Action
Surrendering Like Joseph For over four years the idea of creating a course on Ignatian prayer sat tucked away on a long-term dream list. Every now and then, it would resurface to the forefront, but as I prayed with it God would gently tuck it away again for...
Resisting Jesus – Resisting Mercy
Resisting Mercy: Connection is the Antidote We sat at our gate staring at the monitor. Our plane had already been delayed once. If you’d told me that southern California would get a winter storm, complete with snow, I wouldn’t have believed you. Yet here we were...
Resisting Jesus – Resisting Intimacy with Jesus
Does anyone else struggle with intimacy in prayer? This was not a concept or experience encouraged when I was growing up, and it has been a struggle even now after 5-ish years of immersion in Ignatian Spirituality. Ignatian Contemplation has been a great gift...
