Watching events in Singapore unfold, I thought about some truths I’ve learned about life. Only an individual can be a carrier of life—not our institutions, organizations, governments and their policies, or even churches with their dogmas and doctrines. It is only through our individual genuineness and aliveness that we can significantly touch others. Only our capacity to be truly present…
Since ancient times, blood was used as a ritual sacrament. It was seen as the carrier of the spirit of life and character that lived in a person. Blood has been symbolic of the seat of the soul and the life force within a person. In our culture, we use the term “blood” in symbolic ways, employing idiomatic expressions like:…
According to Jesus, forgiving others is a necessary condition to receiving answers to our prayers. In his parable about the unforgiving servant, he warns that failure to forgive from the heart carries a high price tag: we’ll be turned over to torturers. We experience great loss when we do not realize how our unforgiveness affects us on every level of…
A few years after I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I still suffered from too many negative feelings and beliefs. I experienced jealousy, rejection, unloved, unable to connect to the feeling of love in my heart, emptiness, shame, guilt, and all kinds of fears—even though my church friends considered me a good Christian. So I began to pray…
In the Bible God promises to restore us to health and heal our wounds. Here is a healing encounter my husband Gerald experienced about 15 years ago. “I was in a situation where I felt very disconnected from the people I was with, people who were very close to me. That evening I prayed & asked the Lord what my…
In the early years of my spiritual journey, I often heard people pray, “Lord, get him!” —sometimes with judgmental vindictiveness. This troubled me, but I didn’t know why. One day my eyes fell on St. Paul’s words and the Holy Spirit caused me to see something I’d been blind to: it is the kindness of God that brings us to…
The intern’s rock: Theresa, a young intern in the Bad Herrenalb Klinik, frequently interpreted for me. One day I noticed her fondling this crystal rock; I asked her why she did this. “Oh,” she said, “I believe there is healing in the rocks.” Then I asked her if she knew that Jesus Christ is the greatest rock of all, and there is…