Minute Meditations

A statue of St. Francis of Assisi on a horse as a young soldier

St. Francis Encounters the Crucified Christ

The Franciscan path to God is an inversion of monastic values. Rather than fleeing the world to find God, God is to be found in the world. The idea that “the world is our cloister” finds its root in Francis ...
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Gratitude Is the Mystical Minimum

G.K. Chesterton spoke of the “mystical minimum,” which he defined as gratitude. When we stand in the immense abundance of the True Self, there is no time or space for being hurt. We are always secure, at rest, and foundationally ...
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The True Shape of Things

Our world is filled with contradictions needing to be reconciled, inconsistencies within us and between us. Life is neither perfectly consistent and rational nor is it a chaotic mess. It does contain, however, constant paradoxes, exceptions, and flaws. That is ...
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It's All about Forgiveness

If we don’t get forgiveness, we’re missing the whole mystery. We are still living in a world of meritocracy, of quid-pro-quo thinking, of performance and behavior that earns an award. Forgiveness is the great thawing of all logic, reason, and ...
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Families and Rituals

Rituals create families, in a sense. Any parent knows that when they do something at least two years in a row, the little ones wait for it in the third year. Children have a natural sense of timing, ritual, seasons, ...
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Change Is Hard

The word change normally refers to new beginnings. But transformation, the mystery we’re examining, more often happens not when something new begins, but when something old falls apart. The pain of something old falling apart—chaos—invites the soul to listen at ...
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Transformation Is a Process

Change happens, but transformation is always a process of letting go, living in the confusing, shadowy space for a while, and eventually being spit up on a new and unexpected shore. You can see why Jonah in the belly of ...
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