"People in a hurry never have time for recovery. Their minds have little time to meditate and pray so that problems can be put in perspective. In short, people in our age are showing signs of physiological disintegration because we are living at a pace that is too fast for our bodies." -- Archibald Hart in Adrenaline and Stress. Quoted by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun in Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us (InterVarsity Press, 2005), italics in Calhoun. This summer a mix of graduate students and … [Read more...] about What exhausts you?
spiritual disciplines
Thank you. You can rest Dallas Willard.
I write after a good cry. Dallas Willard died this morning after announcing stage 4 cancer on Monday. You can read more here. For those who don't know, Dallas was a longtime philosophy professor at USC. He was a great voice for Christianity and his writings will continue to influence new generations of Christians. His book Spirit of the Disciplines was influential in my life, helping me to see that following and becoming like Christ is our life's work. I became a disciple by reading this book. At the end of my … [Read more...] about Thank you. You can rest Dallas Willard.
What Are You Thankful For? The Spiritual Discipline of Gratitude
All this month, my Facebook feed has been filled with friends participating in 30 Days of Thanksgiving, posting each day about something for which they are thankful —their family, their friends, the goodness of God's provision, etc. The regular practice of gratitude is an important guard against cynicism and self-righteousness and something that I endorse. Even so, it was hard for me not to laugh at the Facebook post of a friend, who recently left a PhD program in Second Temple Judaism and is currently struggling to … [Read more...] about What Are You Thankful For? The Spiritual Discipline of Gratitude
Which Bible do you use?
At church on Sunday, a friend leaned over and asked me what Bible I was using. It happened to be the ESV Study Bible; she asked because of the many (and long) footnotes, margin references, etc., but this is only one of the Bibles that I use on a regular basis. In my experience, academic types tend to have strong opinions about their Bibles, especially on a few key points. Then again, maybe this is just me: Which translation (if any)? Bible translations come in many varieties, with several different … [Read more...] about Which Bible do you use?
Freshmen, Stress, and Spirituality
The NY Times reports that the emotional health of college freshmen is at a 25-year low, based on the annual survey conducted by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute. In the survey, “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010,” involving more than 200,000 incoming full-time students at four-year colleges, the percentage of students rating themselves as “below average” in emotional health rose. Meanwhile, the percentage of students who said their emotional health was above average fell to 52 percent. It was 64 … [Read more...] about Freshmen, Stress, and Spirituality