• Hem of His Garment
    Featured

    3 Instructions on How to Touch the Hem of His Garment

    Today is the day to come to Jesus and touch the hem of His garment. Isolation, from others or from God, due to negative emotions such as shame or grief, often leave us enduring a kind of perpetual anxiety. We need contact with God and with others in order to feel safe and loved.  The story of the woman with the issue of blood is a case in point.  She was ‘unclean’ due to the physical issue she suffered.  Ritual impurity is not something we identify with in our society, but the aspect of shame and isolation is.  Our negative emotions flow from us, defiling others. In those days, no…

  • Door to freedom from anxiety
    Anxiety,  Fear,  Imaginative Prayer

    Three Methods that Helped Me Conquer Anxiety

    I became aware of my anxiety, ironically, when suddenly I had less to fear.  I found myself a single mother of four wonderful daughters and free of a narcissistic and cruel ex-husband.  I was so used to feeling numb that when I began to reconnect with my emotions, all the fear I lived with for years came to the surface. My approach to life, similar to my father’s, is to get a few books on a topic and begin to educate myself, but somehow specific methods for curing anxiety proved elusive. The one thing that kept popping up in my research is that the brain is plastic, and we have…

  • Communion,  Featured,  Imaginative Prayer,  Presence

    You Are What You Eat: Communion Reimagined

    While in Jerusalem some years ago, we visited the Upper Room.  It had long since been turned into a small chapel, and as we sat on the wooden pews, a tour guide took us through the story of Jesus’ communion with the disciples.  Afterwards, one of the students I was with asked about the authenticity of this site as the actual location of the Upper Room.  The tour guide smiled and then told us about the six other Upper Rooms in the vicinity.  Apparently, an ambitious tourist could go around and partake of the sacrament in seven Upper Rooms in an afternoon. Honestly, if I had the time, I might…