I have also enjoyed candles. I think I particularly enjoy late fall and winter because it gets dark earlier and I like to go around my house lighting up the darkness. Lighting candles is a spiritual practice for me. It began quite a long time ago, but I became more prayerfully intentional about it about…
Category: Ponderings
My dad’s death
My dad, Jim (James Colin Heaney) passed away suddenly on Feb. 23, 2007. It is now Nov. of 2008 and I am just now writing on my blog. I’ve done alot of writing, by hand, in my journals. One journal I began immediately after his death, and it contains stuff, memories, emotions, thoughts, questions, loss…
Belief and mystery
I believe in the mystery of the kingdom of God; in the power of silence and prayer for the world. I believe and embrace the mystery of communion with God – of eating God’s flesh and drinking His blood (with the complete awareness that this sounds kind of ludicrous and barbaric). I believe in children:…
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius
About two weeks ago I began attending a class about the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius. Inigo (Ignatius) of Loyola was a Basque warrior from way back when who ended up encountering and connecting with God through a series of events in his life. Out of his own story with God came what he termed…
Entering the Emptiness
I didn’t come up with the above title on my own, it’s the chapter title in a book I like by Gerald May, “The Awakened Heart”. I first read this book about five years ago. I’ve picked it up again, because I feel like my heart is being awakened again to go a little deeper…
Anne Lamott
I like Anne Lamott: how she writes, stuff she thinks about, just a bunch of stuff. I’ve been having a hard time recently with some things in life and came across something that she wrote: “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right…
Silence
“Bisogna aggiungere il proprio silenzio al silenzio dei luoghi.” Translated from Italian to English: You need to bring your own silence to the silence of places. I landed upon this phrase while tasting wine in Montalcino, Italy . I was sipping wine and glancing through a photography book and below the photos were written different…
Auschwitz
> I’m actually not quite sure how to even express my visit to Auschwitz I and II. I have heard and read about and seen movies that depict and explain the terrible atrocities that happened here, but it is a completely different moment to actually stand there, visit, walk around and see it. I felt…
What is ‘Spiritual Direction’ ?
This is my question. At least, not in the sense of understanding it so much, as me being able to come to my own working language definition of what I experience spiritual direction to be. It’s not so much directional in the sense of having a destination in mind, like finding the end destination on…
Conversation with an Eagle
I was on a contemplative ‘Psalms of my Life,’ retreat last week. As a group we worked through a variety of psalms and the accompanying feelings that the authors conveyed through their writing: lament, anger, fear and celebration. Leading up to this retreat I had been aware of some sadness that I was experiencing around…
Musings of the day
Today is Sunday. I’ve just finished reading Bono’s speech given at the national prayer breakfast. I was reading it because Nathan is doing a history project on Bono and U2. I helped him yesterday create his “Bono board game”. He is such a funny little fellow, that son of mine (ours). Last night I was…
Rats and Theology
Yesterday we discovered that we have a lovely, or not so lovely (actually it really grosses me out) family of rats living in our crawl space underneath our house. Yuck. Last night I was cuddling with Becca doing our usual evening bedtime routine, when as part of our prayer time together I asked God to…
Sharon Richards 