In last week's Gospel reading, Jesus taught his disciples about scandals, or tripping points, and how we're responsible for how we react when we get tripped up. It's a variation on a common, and important, theme: that so much in life is not about what we experience but how we respond to it. I'd like … Continue reading How’s Your Heart? A Reflection on Mark 10.2-16
We've all been there, from the clumsiest of us (like me!) to professional athletes: Just walking or running along minding our own business, when suddenly something trips us up and we stumble. It's an apt metaphor for life itself, and specifically the life of faith. Months and years can pass by without incident — we … Continue reading Tripping Points: A Reflection on Mark 9.38-59
As this series, Growing with Intention, wraps up, I thought it would be helpful to take a step back and look at the practices as a whole, from a specifically Christian theological lens. As someone who comes to these practices in a desire to be more faithful and to be a better disciple of Jesus, … Continue reading Integral Growth & Christian Spirituality
In this series on engines of spiritual growth, we've looked at how we can use our hearts, minds, unconscious wisdom, and actions to push us forward in faithfulness. But none of this would be possible without the body in and of itself. So I can't leave this series without giving some thought to this beautiful, … Continue reading Growing with Intention: The Body
So far in this series on practices and behaviours we can use to grow in faith, we've explored two ways of engaging transcendence (through 'spiritual' experiences and beauty), two ways of expanding the mind (through dialectical epistemology and value metabolism), and ways of bringing what is hidden into our awareness (especially through dream work and … Continue reading Growing with Intention: ‘Perfecting the Universe’ (or, Bearing Good Fruit (again))
Matthew Root 