Hope begins in the personal meeting with a divine presence-made-flesh, and encountered in the messy and imperfect reality of our daily experience.
Julian Carron
the potter
“Others do not create problems for us; Others make us aware of the problems we have.”
all is well
While we say that fear is an emotion we don’t like and seek to avoid, many people seem irrationally attracted to what instills and aggravates fear.
listen in the car
I rarely get the opportunity to read as much as I would like to. I have a stack of books and articles waiting to be read both in my office and piled beside the bed....
disarming beauty
Too often we see Christian faith presented as and reduced to moralistic and legalistic adherence to cultural norms and moral ideals. However our experience of life with...
weekend reading
I thought readers might appreciate some inspiring weekend reading. Recently Fr Julian Carron's book Disarming Beauty was published in English. It's release is timely as...
what about now?
Pope Francis never ceases to amaze us. Speaking at the December 17 General Audience, he said, “The Incarnation of the Son of God opens a new beginning in the universal...
eager running
It has been an inspiration and a privilege in recent weeks to spend time reflecting on the reality of the resurrection of Jesus with several different groups. For too...
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the teenagers
A few years ago I discovered the wonderful way that God uses my imagination in my prayer.
Such openness to imagination when seeking God does not take us away from reality into fantasy but instead brings me into what is most real and inescapably personal and intimate.
Annunciation
A couple of thousand years ago, a young Jewish woman was going about her normal morning routines, perhaps with a mixture of house and garden work, chatting with parents and neighbours, aware of the local drought, the sickness of a neighbour and annoyed by the neighbourhood’s lack of sleep caused by the Romans’ noisy party the night before, when God broke into her routine and entered her life in a new and powerful way.
the real centre
Over the last month I have had the opportunity to work with many people across Aotearoa and further afield. In every retreat and seminar I have been with committed and faith-filled people who often feel as though they are on the periphery of the Church
the adventure
It’s easy to make the mistake of seeing life as a treadmill, day after day ups and downs, a movement through time from youth to old age, then death and beyond.
Too often if feels as if we are helplessly captive carried along by the momentum of all that is expected of us and demanded from us, and we risk falling into an existence mode, a daily rhythm of survival, enduring, coping and so the treadmill rolls on.
the bigger picture
Over the years, and even in recent months, weeks and days, I’ve prayed many prayers which have not been answered as I had hoped.
You’ve probably had the same experience: praying and wondering if and when or how your prayer will be answered.