This essay will help you write, lead, or choose a guided meditation. It starts with some simple steps for leading an effective meditation, gives some guidelines for choosing or composing a meditation, then concludes with two sample guided meditations.

God is all without being any thing, while being the all in every thing.

I’m attending a conference at Esalen Institute near Big Sur this week. It’s hosted by Esalen’s Center for Theory and Research. It’s focused on peacemaking among the Abrahamic faiths. After the first day of the meeting, I …

She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.

Beatitude Nine: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Beatitude Six: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”
“No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” (l John 4: 12) It is through the heart that we experience God directly.

Beatitude Seven: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
Beatitude Eight: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for justice’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Station Twelve: Jesus dies on the cross.

Beatitude Five: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”
Jesus was merciful, but didn’t receive mercy. He forgave the people who were about to kill him, but they killed him anyway. Yet we are still haunted by his assertion of the possibility of a world in which mercy works both ways.

This past week, I’ve engaged in a couple of intense conversations about manhood in America. A lovely, thoughtful young friend of our family, age 25, was lamenting that she could not find men her age who were …

(This poem, which I wrote during Lent in 1981, appears in my book, BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS – it is based on Numbers 21: 4-9, John 3: 13-15) THE GIFT No one’s raised who did not fall No …

Beatitude Four: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.”

A new collection of poetry and prayer. Vosper once again gives expression to the beauty and complexity of life in ways that can touch and move us on many levels. Identifying our interconnectedness as a core principle of our common, human journey, Vosper plays with imagery and symbol, weaving us into a whole that lifts and ennobles us all.

Beatitude Two: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Luke 20: 21 says: “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”)

This guide focuses on the Beatitudes of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and on the fourteen Stations of the Cross, which symbolize the events remembered on Good Friday.

The recent mass murder of children in a Connecticut school has resulted in at least some redemption, in the form of the current effort by the President to introduce sensible gun laws. Banning assault weapons and imposing …

Meditation on God is Love. How many times have we heard the word “love” being used to define that which is ultimately indefinable? I suppose it is because that’s the only word that can even bring us close to grasping the ungraspable.

Traditionally this is a time to learn from our mistakes and commit ourselves to do differently in the new year. I wonder what resolutions Jesus would have made? For some, it may seem shocking to suggest that …

It was carved with hand tools on a rough slab of native red rock: “Marcelito L. Baca – murio a la edad de 17 dias (died at the age of 17 days) – 1919”. It was planted …