I have come to consider these re ective prayers as the most signi cant of my writing. I began to publish the series in 2011 and followed periodically with more recent sequences since then. Beginning in 2024, I have been assembling in electronic form earlier sequences of these re ective prayers, moving in segments from that point where I began in 2011. is collection brings my beginning date back into 2006. I nd the series continuing to illumine the way the Spirit moves through me in respons...

These meditations take a verse from one of the lectionary texts not chosen for preaching for a given service and offer a devotional reflection on the verse, often using the context of the entire pericope as prescribed in the Revised Common Lectionary for context as needed. I try to make the meditations worth the while of my readers, having found a fairly broad readership among the congregations I served through the years. This book covers the years 2020 through 2024.

In late 1995, with the advice of a friend, I arranged for a retreat with Sr. Cornelia Gust, a Benedictine Sister in Crookston MN. That first retreat came in January of 1996, a partial week set up to test the model. In response, I created a narrative tracing my way through the retreat, adding a selection of verse centered on the surroundings. I decided to repeat the experiment in the Summer of 1996, again in the Spring and then the Fall of 1997. In each case, I gathered the experience in wh...

These Reflective Prayers are the result of permitting a gentle reading of the lectionary texts for a given service to resonate in me and emerge as a searching engagement of the word with my spirit in a mood of settled joy. The ninety samples given are the most recent, in order, at the time of publication.

Writing poetry has proven to be a great aid in seeing what I see, hearing what I hear. From my perspective, something happens, something gets noticed. The image, the happening strikes my mind, entices some response in words. An image or sequence of images appear and enter into a line. The line bears for me a cadence and a sound. Vowels tend to be important to me and help to elicit a sequence of lines that add onto one another until they reach the point where they stop and the poem ends. Th...

I have come to consider these reflective prayers as among the most spiritually significant of my writings. I began to publish the series in 2011 and followed with more recent sequences since then. Beginning in 2024, I have been assembling in electronic form earlier sequences of these reflective prayers, moving in segments from that point where I began in 2011. This collection brings my beginning date for published items back to 2001. I find the series continuing to illumine the way the Spi...

Reading that the 2.88.888. hymn meter is considered powerful in Welsh hymnody - but that it is not used in English - I became curious. I tried the pattern out even though I initially could find no hymn tunes to that meter; indeed, it has not been used in English as my glance at my hymnals and online showed. So, I took my experience of hymn meters and the way this one was expressed and let the resonance begin to flow. It seemed to me that the meter did work in English, that it provided a po...

Poetry writing has proven proficient at helping me see what is there to be seen, hear what is there to be heard. I will see or hear or reflect on something which then provides an image, a nuance that emerges in a word, a line. The single line and image, written, provides a cadence, a focus of sound and echo that invites a second line, and more. Usually, the poems come quickly and run until they stop: the poem is complete. This book draws upon such poems over a pair of sweeps of my history ...

These Reflective Prayers are the result of permitting a gentle reading of the lectionary texts for a given service to resonate in me and emerge as a searching engagement of the word with my spirit in a mood of settled joy. The ninety samples given are the most recent, in order, at the time of publication.

This book joins the series of titles assembling my sequence of Reflective Prayers. Earlier productions have taken up the more recent examples of the series; this volume takes up the prior 89 reflective prayers in order. I have come to consider these as perhaps the most significant of my productions, certainly of those I continue to write. In that light, I am hoping to extend the sequence back in time through those I consider to represent a maturity in the engagement with the scriptures I h...

Abbot Andre Louf said that, when a person decides to get serious about the spiritual life, s/he should acquire a spiritual director. Wayne Proudfoot argued that the form of religious experience depends upon the tradition in which it is perceived. Georges Bataille searched out the meaning of his own intense inner experience in non-traditional ways. This book seeks to follow the meaning of traditional measures of the spiritual life learned through the experience of the author once his spirit...

These are bible studies of a limited scale, developed and led by the author with two of the congregations he served. The first congregation was in Mantua OH in the late 1970s, from which the first three bible studies arose: Ruth, Lamentations, and The Infancy Narratives. The second congregation was in New Martinsville WV from 1998 through 2003, these being done is a slightly different style: Psalms of Ascent, Selected Psalms, The Speech of Stephan, Encountering God, Matthew 5 and Matthew 6...