The Alphabet of Grace

From “Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner” by Frederick Buechner LIFE ITSELF CAN BE thought of as an alphabet by which God graciously makes known his presence and purpose and power among us. Like the Hebrew alphabet, the alphabet of grace has no vowels, and in that sense his words to us

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What Trust is Like

From “The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything” by Stephen M. R. Covey Simply put, trust means confidence. The opposite of trust – distrust – is suspicion. When you trust people, you have confidence in them, in their integrity and in their abilities. When you distrust, you are suspicious of them –

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Motivation

From “How Will You Measure Your Life?” by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon Frederick Herzberg, probably one of the most incisive writers on the topic of motivation theory, published a breakthrough article in the HBR… The theory distinguishes between two different types of factors: hygiene factors and motivation factors… Hygiene factors are

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Ordinary Mystics

From “What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman” by Lerita Coleman Brown My interest in spirituality had begun many years ago, during college. Over the years, I read Catholic mystics like St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross; dabbled in Thomas Merton; studied Quaker mystics George Fox, Thomas

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Let Your Life Speak

From “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation” by Parker J. Palmer I was in my early thirties when I began, literally, to wake up to questions about my vocation. By all appearances, things were going well, but the soul does not put much stock in appearances. Seeking a path more purposeful

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the spiritual practice that accesses and seeks to understand what God is trying to say

From “Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life” by Henri Nouwen with Michael J. Christensen and Rebecca J. Laird The premise of this book is that God is always speaking to us – individually and as the people of God – at different times and in many ways: through dreams and visions, prophets and messengers,

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Carved in Stone?

From “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” by Carol S. Dweck, PhD When I was a young researcher, just starting out, something happened that changed my life. I was obsessed with understanding how people cope with failures, and I decided to study it by watching how students grapple with hard problems. So I brought children

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