The ancients used to call sight, “The Queen of the Senses.” I suspect this enthronement of the sense of sight is still understandable to us. After all, what is lovelier than seeing the orange fire of the sky at sunrise? What is more beautiful than the burning leaves of autumn? What touches our hearts more…

Bartimaeus son of Timaeus was a nobody. He wasn’t just any nobody he was a nobody among the nobodies. People often walked past Bartimaeus and at best they thought of the blind beggar as a nuisance. Day in and day out Bartimaeus would make his way to his familiar spot. Feeling his way along the…

“Throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.” In today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark, we may imagine the cloak was given to Bartimaeus by his mother. Giving him the cloak was one thing she could do for her son, for whom she always felt a mix of grief and pity,…

Recipe for success: one part awareness, one part knowledge, one part motivation, one part action. Slowly add one ingredient at a time, gradually and with care. Then begin again. Note: you may be inspired to start over at any point in the process. One might place knowledge before awareness, but without awareness how does knowledge…

The lectionary passages today continue with the magnificent words of Isaiah, the stern words in Hebrews, and the simply told stories of the Gospel according to Mark. Isaiah, the poet-prophet paints a vivid picture of a depraved society that has turned away from God, a whole community that is contaminated by sin and injustice. There…