One major area of difference among Christians over the past few centuries has been the question of authority. Some have claimed that the Bible is the sole authority for Christian faith, others have insisted that authority lies in the Church and its Holy Tradition. The Deists of the Enlightenment claimed that reason was to be … Continue reading On Authority
Back in 2021, I wrote a series based on the idea that we need to normalize sin without minimizing it. My premise is that so many people have a knee-jerk reaction against talk about sin because it’s been blown out of proportion: When we hear someone say, “I’m a sinner,” we hear “I’m a wretch … Continue reading For Mirth and Mourning
There’s a common truth in the worlds of spirituality and psychology that we can’t go move on in life until we’ve truly learned what our present circumstances have to teach us. This was powerfully shown in Ben Okri’s delightful modern myth Astonishing the Gods, where the hero walks through a city wondering at its many … Continue reading On Paying Attention
In spirituality writ large, it’s common for people to talk about longing for God, or the divine. And certainly the various traditions of Christian spirituality and mysticism are no exceptions to this. But one thing that sticks out about how Julian of Norwich uses this language is that she’s actually far less concerned about our … Continue reading God’s Longing Love
A few days ago, we saw how, in a passage talking about the problem of pain, Julian of Norwich stumbled into some language that comes across as being dualist, denigrating matter and embodied life while praising the soul and spiritual life. She comes by this language honestly, for even those of us who, like Julian, … Continue reading The Cart and the Horse: A Reflection on Romans 8:6-11 and Julian of Norwich
