Posts in Spirituality

For the Love of a Patient After My Own Heart

For the Love of a Patient After My Own Heart

I arrived early to be an earwitness to the night shift’s report to the dayshift. I admired how the nurse with whom I was to work that day seamlessly received the report that I could only, at best, make half sense of. Knowledge decanted from the mind of one nurse to the next distilling indispensable bits from any distasteful dregs about the previous night. The final tipoff from the drained night-nurse was her impression that our heart transplant patient would soon begin to recover consciousness as the effect of the heavy drugs diminished. It turns out this night would be about two hearts.

About Family Therapy, the Christmas Creche, and Being Molded Deeply Into God’s Divine Embrace

About Family Therapy, the Christmas Creche, and Being Molded Deeply Into God’s Divine Embrace

Imagine it’s Christmas morning again. You reach into your stocking and pull out a hefty lump of clay with directions attached. You’re to make clay figures of the most important people in your life and arrange them in a way that represents each person’s personality and role in the group dynamic. What does the scene reveal? Christopher Alt reflects on a family therapy technique, the Nativity, and allowing ourselves to be molded more deeply into God’s divine embrace.

What 7th Graders Taught Me About Prayer

What 7th Graders Taught Me About Prayer

I might be exhausted from the pandemic, or frustrated that I can’t control a math class, or anxious about the election, but that all pales in comparison to everyone I’m praying for. What my students have taught me, though, is that behind this faux-humility is my false belief that I can probably resolve my exhaustion or frustration or anxiety by myself. My students have taught me so much about prayer. Read and reflect with me about wisdom that can arise from seventh graders.

How God and Grace Will Find Me this Holiday Season

How God and Grace Will Find Me this Holiday Season

Perhaps, like me, you are discerning how you should spend your holidays? You are praying and asking God to show you how to be present to your loved ones and still keep them safe. As I pray with all my anger, frustration, loneliness, and hunger for loved ones this holiday season, I am reminded that God often provides for us in ways we don’t expect or even necessarily want. 

This Advent I’m Thinking About Death

This Advent I’m Thinking About Death

November, we formally mark the recollection of our beloved dead, has passed away. Now we’re in the season of Advent, a penitential season, a time to take stock of what we need and whether we’re willing to wait for it. And, as if All Souls and Advent weren’t a reminder of death, we’re still living in this pandemic, which has claimed the lives of nearly 1.5 million people worldwide. This might sound dire, but we’re in Advent, so there is hope! Hope in our waiting. Take a moment and reflect with me on waiting!

From “I Love You” to “I Love You”: Learning to Love My Vocation

From “I Love You” to “I Love You”: Learning to Love My Vocation

“I love you” It just was the most believable utterance of that phrase I’ve ever heard, while sitting in an utterly unremarkable conference room transformed with incense and song into a place open to worship; somehow breaking through the stubborn habits of conventional self-assurance I felt forced to carry. For some, a vocation is automatic, an easy skin to fit into. For others, God’s call is great, the response is real, and yet it is something one must learn to love. Take a moment to read and pray with a reflection about my vocation, and maybe it will illuminate something about yours.

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