When the music stops, all is stripped away...

A recently released British journalist hostage stated "everyone should be a prisoner a some point, in order to value and appreciated freedom".



Desparation drives us to the holy.

That's a hard place to be, but is the way to holiness.

My Haitian friends experience tremendous physical challenges, which takes them to the footstool of heaven. They know how to pray, they know how to sing from the heart, beyond the emotions, they know how to praise God, they know how to perservere.

There is nothing romantic about poverty - it sucks, Jesus never blessed it. There is nothing endearing about a "functional atheism" in the western world where we have so much stuff, we don't really "need" God. What I do know is that when we strip away all the stuff, and the supports and the trappings, we find God.

Goods or God - God is the better, and yet we are all called to shared in community of the riches of our store-house, material or spiritual.

Meaninglessness, loneliness find answers when are lives are stripped bare of the accoutrements. In the quiet place is God.