Tag Archives: jesus

December 3, 2025 · 9:38 am

Advent is “New” Each Year

“Advent reenacts a past event as if it was new each year.” – Diana Butler Bass, A Beautiful Year

There is a familiarness to this Advent time of year. We use familiar decorations, assume familiar routines and find ourselves among familiar people. We attend the usual services, programs and parties. We observe the well known traditions of our upbringing or adulthood. We revisit things from past years by memory or physical reunion.

“This is the day of the Christmas program.” “The yuletide dinner happens on the 12th.” “There’s a gift exchange with staff on the 21st.” It’s a time to reflect, to retell the story, and to make pilgrimage.

But, for all that is familiar, there is room for something new. Afterall, you are not exactly who or where you were last year, or any year prior. There are new factors in your life – new situations and circumstances too. Maybe you are in a new relationship, with a new friend or new grandchild. Maybe you are newly retired, newly unemployed or employed, have newly moved, or find yourself newly energized or challenged.

Life is never static. It’s organic, always changing and growing and evolving. The very composition of your body continues to change as old cells die off and new ones emerge and grow. Your mind is renewed by your thoughts and dreams, by what you read and what you hear and reflect on. Your spirit is refreshed by your devotion, prayer and worship life.

The annual invitation to the Advent season of preparation and waiting is to lean into the new, even as you revisit the familiar. Retell and listen again to the stories of Advent as you encounter the Scriptual themes. But do so in light of what’s new or fresh in you. Listen with a new focus. Allow your new situation to be the lens through which you encounter the familiar once again.

Anticipate Jesus’ coming again. Yet ask, “what’s new in this anticipation” for me? What is it that you are to pay attention? What does this Advent have for you to learn – about yourself, your faith, your relationships, your God? Might you be being asked to pay attention in a new way during this season that feels so familiar but can be so new?

© Daniel M. Cash 2025

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November 25, 2025 · 1:05 pm

A Thanksgiving Exam

There is an ancient practice found in the history of the Church called “The Examination of Conscience” or “The Examen”.  I learned about this practice years ago and have found it to be a helpful exercise. Today I taught about it in my Introduction to Christianity class, as an example of a practice of faith that helps us in the Christ way of living.  I’m not sure how it connected with my group of 18–22-year-olds, but maybe it landed with a few of them.

Revisiting this ancient practice, during this Thanksgiving season, gave me pause to consider its merits for the practice of thanksgiving. Here’s how an adapted version of the practice that I call “Stop, Look and Listen” might work for you:

Stop: Stop what you are doing, find a comfortable place to sit with both feet on the floor and your body relaxed (no arms or legs crossed) with palms open.  Breathe – pay attention to your breath, “let go” of any stress, worries or mental squirrels you are apt to chase. Just stop!

Look: Look back over the past year.  Ask yourself: “What is there to be thankful for?”  Make a mental list or perhaps write down your list.  What are you grateful for?  How has God blessed your life in the past twelve months?

Offer those thanksgivings to God in prayer – this can be naming the list itself, or just mentally revisiting what you’ve listed.  No need for fancy language.

Now, looking back, ask yourself: What am I not grateful for? What do I need to repent of, let go of, seek forgiveness for, or say ‘I’m sorry’ about, and to whom? 

Once you’ve made that list – take action.  Bring these things before the Lord or resolve when and how to address them with the people whom you’ve identified.  Let go!  Release these hindrances to thankful living.

Listen: Be still.  Sit in silence. Try for at least five minutes – longer if you dare. Light a candle as a focal point for your listening.  Use a mantra to focus your mind: “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner”.  Or read over a favorite scripture.

Listen. Allow God to speak and read your mind, your person. Just be still and know that God is God.

Don’t rush this part of the exercise.  It’s ok to feel a bit uncomfortable. Just be still!

When you are ready, recite the Lord’s Prayer or Psalm 23, blow out your candle (if you lit one) and move into the remainder of your day or season with thanksgiving.   Amen.

© Daniel M. Cash 2025

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October 20, 2025 · 11:18 am

There is Only One King

This past Saturday (October 18, 2025), according to some news sources over 7 million Americans joined together at over 2,700 protests held across the United States on what was called “No Kings Day II” (*No Kings Day I was held June 14, 2025). These individuals met in common bond around the concern that the current Presidential Administration is working to subvert democracy and moving at a fast clip in an autocratic direction more common to a dictator or king than what the United States Constitution proscribes for the Executive Branch of our government.

While I was not able to join the local protest due to another obligation, I had loved ones and friends who did participate. Consistent with what has been reported elsewhere, they said the local protest was peaceful, non-disruptive, and made up of people from varied age groups, ethnicities and political allegiance. In other words, it was a gathering held in the spirit of other American protests over the years, acting on the rights of free speech and independent thinking. It was not, as some critics claimed, an anti-American or non-patriotic act of disobedience – there being a distinct difference between disagreement and disobedience.  

It seems to me that if over 7 million Americans were willing to give up some of their Saturday to attend and participate in such a protest, there is a significant amount of dissatisfaction being registered concerning the actions of our current Executive and his administration. In short, many people (maybe most people?) are not happy with the autocratic acts of a president who continues to circumvent congressional oversight, and overreach on judicial precedents. Many people are worried about the direction the country is heading and the unwillingness of the other branches of government to act as a check and balance on an out-of-control president.

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August 26, 2025 · 1:39 pm

Meanness Unchecked Leads to More Meanness

It is sad to watch our nation turn into a meaner and more isolated version of itself.  But this is clearly what is happening under the current administration.  Despite the provision in the U.S. Constitution for three co-equal branches of government (legislative, judicial and executive) it seems that two of the three (especially the legislative) have mostly chosen to look the other way while the executive who occupies the people’s house remakes things in his own selfish, mean-spirited likeness. This is contrary to the founders desire that these branches serve as a check to balance the weight of influence and power.

Politics has always been dirty business, and I am sure we could point to periods of history that were fraught with decisions, actions and words filled with vitriol and unproductive outcomes. But surely this time in history will prove to have rivaled them, if we survive it intact and are afforded the opportunity to look back on it one day.

One of the simple lessons that may be most prominent is something we all should have learned in our primary education: meanness unchecked just leads to more meanness.

Do you remember this lesson from the schoolyard? The class bully who was given a free pass on unsavory behavior always took that as permission to increase said behavior. Worse yet, was when the bully garnered a following of kids who praised and fed that behavior. They did this by pouring flattery on the misdeeds of one who showed no conscience or sense of fairness. There’s nothing a bully needs more than to be flattered and made the center of attention.

It seems to me that we are witnessing this today on a much grander scale as national and even world leaders acquiesce to the whims and whiplash actions of an executive who feels he has a blank slate from which to wreak havoc on others. In just a few short months, having doubled down on experience gained from occupying the seat of power once before, this executive has challenged, and somehow blown past, almost every check on his office. It’s as if he can’t quite believe the people gave him the keys to the office again. Neither can I. One thing is certain he isn’t going to give them back without a fight.

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June 3, 2025 · 1:48 pm

My First Spiritual Directors

Maybe you have heard of the Christian practice of spiritual direction?  It has been in existence for quite some time and has found both renewal and expansion in recent years. While the roots of this practice are biblical, modeled in the mentorship and guidance we see in relationships like those of Jethro and Moses, or Eli and Samuel, the formation of the practice really originates in monasticism.  During the days of the Desert Fathers and Mothers it was common for Christian pilgrims to come to them for direction.  And the direction they were seeking was spiritual in nature.

In their book The Practice of Spiritual Direction (Barry & Conolly,1986) the authors offer this definition: “Spiritual direction is help given by one Christian to another which enables that person to pay attention to God’s personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship.” 

Spiritual direction involves both the director and directee or pilgrim.  It centers on the spiritual director’s ability to create space for their directee to explore what they may already know but have found hard to access. In this sense, the work is relational as well as prayerful and reflective in nature.  It’s work that moves at its own pace of discovery, not to be rushed, yet purposeful and guided.

I have had two occasions in which to benefit from a spiritual direction relationship.  One was associated with a Sabbatical.  I built into my plan and budget a sequence of spiritual direction sessions upon the sabbatical’s end to unpack and reflect upon the experience and what lay ahead.  I met with my spiritual director face to face about every four to six weeks for about an hour, during which time she would gently help guide me through whatever question, event or exploration I felt was brimming in my spiritual life.  It was a rich time of discovery and exploration, centered in listening and paying attention to God’s communication.  The insightful questions and observation my director raised were poignant ways of drawing my attention to my relationship with the Lord.

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