While my early mystical experiences seemed to come directly from God “out of the blue,” so to speak, meditation deepened my faith, my prayer discipline, and from time to time brought the fruits of the Holy Spirit or spiritual gifts. In fact, I view meditation itself as a gift. Meditation is the process of …
Silent prayer can be defined as meditation, but a meditation focused on Mystery, God, or Higher Power. Silent prayer is to empty ourselves of all concerns, burdens, activities, and thoughts that can distract us and let God speak to us in our hearts. In order to set the proper tone, there can be a brief …
I recall the first time that I was called upon to “heal” someone through the “gift of healing.” I was teaching an introductory computer course at a local community college at the time to a very large class of 100 students or more. During the course of the semester, a “vision” of one of …
From a theological perspective, the question arises, “How do I know that my mystical experience is valid?” This question is particularly difficult for those who have been taught to rely only on the “law” or the word of scripture as valid. This question can be answered on at least two levels. If one believes, …
After spending two years at the United States Naval Academy as a midshipman and finding shipboard life stifling, I resigned from my commission and transferred to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. where Philosophy and Theology were part of the required curriculum at Georgetown, even for an economics major. A Jesuit theologian, a lay Protestant theologian …
After this experience of seeing the light, through reading, study, and seemingly endless discourse with friends and mentors, it took five years for me to prove intellectually to myself that God existed. As I reflect on this period of my spiritual journey, it seems that several streams of thought and experience converged to become …
Near-death experiences are common enough that twenty thousand cases have been documented and these stories have been published in several well-known books, Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D., and Life After Life by Raymond Moody, M.D. just to name a couple–both are available online. In 19 years, as a chaplain in rehabilitation for stroke, brain …
How do you seek and find? Everyone’s journey is different, singular, but universal at the same time. The journey is usually full of stones of difficulty and at the same time wonderfully full of surprise and even joy. It is difficult to describe and put into words what I or anyone experiences, especially when …