Tag Archives: spiritual

The Jesus Creed 11 – John: The Story of Love

By Scott | Published: September 1, 2010
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord you God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. This is a series of reflections [...]
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Four Hundred Texts on Love (Third Century) 1

By Scott | Published: August 31, 2010
3.  When we misuse the soul’s powers their evil aspects dominate us. For instance, misuse of our power of intelligence results in ignorance and stupidity; misuse of our incensive power and of our desire produces hatred and licentiousness. The proper use of these powers produces spiritual knowledge, moral judgment, love and self-restraint. This being so, [...]
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Praying with the Church 11 – Following Jesus Daily, Hourly, Today

By Scott | Published: August 6, 2010
These are reflections on Scot McKnight‘s book, Praying with the Church, that I wrote and shared with a small circles of friends in 2006. I’ve decided to publish them here only lightly edited. Since they are four years old, they don’t necessarily reflect exactly what I would say today, but they do accurately capture my [...]
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Praying with the Church 10 – How the Divine Hours Prays with the Church

By Scott | Published: August 4, 2010
These are reflections on Scot McKnight‘s book, Praying with the Church, that I wrote and shared with a small circles of friends in 2006. I’ve decided to publish them here only lightly edited. Since they are four years old, they don’t necessarily reflect exactly what I would say today, but they do accurately capture my [...]
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Four Hundred Texts on Love (Second Century) 19

By Scott | Published: July 27, 2010
49.  If a man is not envious or angry, and does not bear a grudge against someone who has offended him, that does not necessarily mean that he loves him. For, while still lacking love, he may be capable of not repaying evil with evil, in accordance with the commandment (cf. Rom. 12:17), and yet [...]
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Heaven & Earth (& Hell) 3 – Unraveling the Caricature

By Scott | Published: June 21, 2010
There are many threads one can use to begin unraveling the somewhat common modern caricature of the Christian perspective on reality I described in the last post. I want to start with the affirmation of the very basic Christian belief that God is not somewhere else. The Christian God is everywhere present and filling all [...]
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What is the source of our oneness?

By Scott | Published: June 4, 2010
Once again, I would appreciate any thoughts, comments, or reactions my words spur in anyone who happens to read this. Incorporating and responding to the thoughts of others is one of the ways I process thoughts, and the thoughts in this post are certainly less than complete. I’ll start with the paragraph from 1 Corinthians [...]
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Funeral Reflections

By Scott | Published: April 30, 2010
Lately I’ve attended too many funerals and seen too many people in our family’s extended circle of relatives and friends die. You could respond that even one such death is too many and I wouldn’t disagree with you. I’ve recognized death as the enemy from that day long ago when my eight year old self [...]
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Four Hundred Texts on Love 9

By Scott | Published: April 21, 2010
31.  Just as the thought of fire does not warm the body, so faith without love does not actualize the light of spiritual knowledge in the soul. Although this text is really just an expanded thought from the Epistle of James, I’m struck by the physicality of the text. Faith alone, which James calls the [...]
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Original Sin 20 – Job 14:4-5

By Scott | Published: March 15, 2010
I left for last an examination of the texts from Scriptures used by St. Augustine to support his idea of original sin as the inherited guilt of all mankind. It has always seemed to me that St. Augustine developed his framework from the other sources and for the reasons I’ve examined in this series and [...]
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