holy coincidences

From “What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman” by Lerita Coleman Brown Young Howard Thurman tossed aside financial and racial obstacles to obtaining a secondary education and moved beyond the oppressive atmosphere of Daytona Beach. At the time, colored children were only permitted to complete the seventh grade, thereby disqualifying them […]

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Letting nature speak

From “Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life” by Henri Nouwen with Michael J. Christensen and Rebecca J. Laird It is remarkable to see how prayer and contemplation open your eyes to nature, and how nature makes you more attentive to divine guidance. I once saw contemplation as something done best in the quiet of

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Low trust slows everything

From “The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything” by Stephen M. R. Covey Low trust causes friction, whether it is caused by unethical behavior or by ethical but incompetent behavior (because even good intentions can never take the place of bad judgment). Low trust is the greatest cost in life and in

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Question: Can everything about people be changed, and should people try to change everything they can?

From “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” by Carol S. Dweck, PhD The growth mindset is the belief that abilities can be cultivated. But it doesn’t tell you how much change is possible or how long change will take. And it doesn’t mean that everything, like preferences or values, can be changed. I was once

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A Call to Prayer

From “Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner” by Frederick Buechner BECAUSE THE WORD that God speaks to us is always an incarnate word – a word spelled out to us not alphabetically, in syllables, but enigmatically, in events, even in the books we read and the movies we see – the chances

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what I wanted to become

From “How Will You Measure Your Life?” by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon The likeness – the person I want to become – was the simplest of the three parts, and was largely an intellectual process… I distilled the likeness of what I wanted to become:

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how to read a book spiritually

From “Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life” by Henri Nouwen with Michael J. Christensen and Rebecca J. Laird Jean-Pierre do Caussade, in his eighteenth-century letters to those for whom he served as spiritual director, provides specific instructions on how to read a book spiritually: If you are to get from it all the good

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