As the Aotearoa New Zealand school year begins for 2022 here’s a thought on the purpose of education, and a reflection on prayer in schools.
reality
at last I can see
The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes, but with the heart.
prayer & reality
In this reflection I share some of the most helpful advice ever given to me about prayer. I hope you find it as encouraging as I have.
a room alone
“All of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone”
busy ?
In the midst of the extra demands of this month, the Season of Advent beginning today offers a timely way to stay happy and centred when everything else threatens to steal our healthy perspective.
living reality
The biographies of those named as saints in the church often promote the false idea that a saint is more likely to be an introvert who prefers to hide in a chapel than to engage with the world.
living? maybe not!
It’s the feast of Ignatius Loyola today and he has helped me to see that my fears and compulsions often tragically lead me to go through days and weeks as if I’m at least half asleep
being real
Somewhere we picked up the false idea that highs mean happy and lows mean sad.
ultimate journey
Welcome to Food For Faith for Advent. Even though we don't begin Advent until this Sunday I'm thinking ahead, especially because I'm celebrating Mass and preaching at...
retreat & reality
A brief Saturday morning live video reflection from New Norcia, a couple of hours north of Perth in Western Australia. I hope you are getting a chance to "retreat" in...
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stand up look up
The Israelites in their forty years in the desert were journeying from captivity to freedom, but the struggle of their desert years made them vulnerable to attack from every temptation as today’s first reading continues
confident in God
I’m not sure if children today are told the great story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, but if not let’s make sure that the parable is taught at all schools of higher learning.
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