One of my areas of learning over the summer has been permaculture, particularly as people are applying it to communities. One of the most interesting conversations going on in that space is the problem of scalability: how to get the micro and macro to functioning together based on the same values and principles. A common … Continue reading Fractal Faith
Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God. So begins Psalm 48, a stirring hymn of praise to God — not the distant God of the philosophers or even the cosmic God of the theologians, but the God who dwelled right there, with and among God’s people. As … Continue reading The City of our God (A reflection on Ps 48)
The most famous origin story of the Buddha goes something like this: A sheltered young prince slips away from his father’s estate one day and is confronted with the harsh realities he has not been allowed to see: poverty, hunger, sickness, old age. Once his innocent bubble is popped, there’s no turning back and the … Continue reading A Moment of Truth (A Reflection on Exodus 2.1-15)
As regular readers may know, I’ve been making a point lately of using the assigned readings from the Hebrew Bible for my lectio divina practice. Because these texts often raise difficult questions, I’ve been intentional about engaging them within an integral framework to get as expansive a reading as I can. (I’ve included a brief … Continue reading Bound / Freed (An Integral Reading of Genesis 22)
I wrote yesterday that I wanted to be intentional about spending time with the daily readings from the Hebrew Bible. Well, today’s is a doozy, filled with both the inspiring and deeply problematic elements we expect from these old stories. God has promised Abraham (at this point in the story, Abraham and Sarah are still … Continue reading Mercy in the Mess (A reflection on Genesis 16)
Matthew Root 