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The Limits Of Love
(Marriage Under Siege Pt II) The notion that the only proper way to fully express sexual love is within a lifelong marriage is today under siege, both as a moral
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Non-Selective Tears
The signs of the times cry out to us … hear and respond to what cries for redemption! Few things cry out as loudly today as does the brokenness of
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Understanding The Desert Of Loneliness
A few summers ago, I decided to spend three months in a Trappist monastery. I was tired out from a very busy year within which my work kept me over-active,
https://ronrolheiser.com/understanding-the-desert-of-loneliness/
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A Frustrated Hunger
We all ache for community. Few longings within us are as incessant. Everywhere, it seems, people are looking for community and complaining about how their families, churches and civic circles
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Playing In The Sun
I love the sun. Something about it lifts my soul. My body too rarely gets enough of it. Against the advice of my parents, and now the doctors, I have
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Faith Requires Religion
Several generations ago, Friedrich Schleiermacher, a prominent Protestant theologian, wrote a book with a curious but revealing title. It translates something like: Speeches on Religion for those among the Cultured
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Life Calls For Mourning
In a recent article, Henri Nouwen counsels us to grieve: “Mourn, my people, mourn. Let your pain rise up in your heart and burst forth in you with sobs and
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The Vale Of Tears
There is a story in the Old Testament that both shocks and fascinates by its sheer earthiness. A certain king, Jephthah, is at war and things are going badly for
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A Role Reversal At Death
Recently I lost a sister through cancer. In my previous column, I described her death, how the pain and devastation of this disease eventually reduced her to a state wherein
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Giving Birth Through Death
Have you ever stood by the bed of someone dying of a terminal disease or of old age and, in pain and anger, wondered why death sometimes works the way