Christianity – Spiritual accompaniment

Book Review: Fathers of the Church (A Comprehensive Intro)

July 29, 2026

I have been looking for three of four years for a good history of early Christianity and for insightful information about the early centuries of “Early Christian Literature” (i.e., Christian writings written after the canonical New Testament with differentiations between and explanations about church-accepted mainstream Christian writers vs. heretical literature). I have found both in Hubertus R. Drobner’s book, The Fathers of the Church – A Comprehensive Introduction.

This book provides 579 pages of academic content detailing Christianity’s first seven hundred years followed by a supplementary bibliography at the end of the book. The Fathers of the Church outlines church history as it topically introduces the Patristic Fathers (i.e., the early church leaders who were foundational in building the church) and the Christian literature that was written following the canonical New Testament. Topical entries are provided covering Western Christianity, the Eastern Church, and supplementary topics outside the direct scope of Christianity itself. Each entry is covered chronologically and by topic, providing a broadly insightful timeline of Christian history.

In addition to the supplementary bibliography at the end of the book, extensive endnote citations are provided throughout the book for each topical entry. By the time I read through the first ~70 pages, I knew that I will be keeping this book. This book provides great information in its’ own right and provides such extensive bibliographic reference data as to be a useful reference tool.

The Fathers of the Church is proving to be a useful supplement to my studies for a Master’s in Theology. I am more educated as a result of reading this book. I recommend the book for anyone who wants a knowledgeable overview of Christian history and a one-stop source of bibliographic reference covering Christianity’s first seven centuries.

This is a book that can be read either straight through or as a reference book that one picks up occasionally. Readers who thumb through it as a source of occasional reference would benefit from giving it an initial “glance through” to get a broad overview of church history.

The author of The Fathers of the Church, Hubertus R. Drobner, has written multiple books about early Christianity. Goodreads provides a listing of his publications here.

FYI, I have also found the online edition of Britannica to be a credible and useful resource for learning about specific topics of church history (Academia concurs. University access to professional databases includes – at least at some schools – access to the pay-to-read sections of Britannica).

Insights along the journey of faith come sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly

July 11, 2026

Ten years ago, I had a re-conversion experience that has born much fruit, bringing about something of an inward emotional re-arrangement (some elements of that story are told here). In the period following that re-conversion experience, I had an extended sense of God loving me. Directly and personally.

How, though, do we explain such experiences? I recently wrote in a paper for my Master’s in Theology that “In recent years, I have been challenged in effort to foster meaningful dialogue about how we each experience our personal faith journeys. Insufficient dialogue on these topics has been a point of frustration and emotional isolation.”

Periodically, I have found “bits and pieces” of how to articulate such experiences. At one point, I heard a parish priest speak of having an “encounter with God” outdoors one afternoon in the American Southwest when he was in his twenties. “Oh, okay,” I recognized – “I can tell people that I had an encounter with God” to partially tell of my experience. Other tidbits of how to talk of my experience come along occasionally. Also, I occasionally find people “in the pews of churches” who are undergoing some kind of an inward emotional re-arrangement that is being wrought by God. I have met two such people in the last five years. All I knew to do was to be present with them. They and I would try to “talk around” what they were experiencing as neither they now I knew how to fully articulate it (thought they were very clearly hungry for conversation and community around what they were experiencing). When Teresa of Avila was told in the 1500’s to write her story – of mystical experiences, etc. – she likewise had to invent a way of describing her inner experiences (she did a great job!).

I discovered a couple of months ago that Augustine wrote about “interiority.” “Ah ha,” I thought! Perhaps, I hoped, the writings of this early church father and theologian might help me to learn to better foster dialogue about how we experience the “interiority” of how we experience our inner faith journeys. I explored this in a paper for school. The paper proved to meander somewhat. In working on that paper, I was better able to articulate the parameters my own questions and came across a few gems of insight about communicating what I mean by spiritual interiority. For example, the Cambridge Companion to Augustine’s Confession tells us:

“Augustine directs his readers’ attention to the soul as an inner world, an interior space of the self that is not literally a place, but rather a dimension of being in which truths may be found, including God as the eternal truth that has always been present both within and above the soul as its creator. Yet, the self comes late to God within itself, because as sinners we keep turning our attention outward, trying to find happiness in external things.”

In order to go inward, the Cambridge Companion to Augustine’s Confessions (above) also communicates about turning away from external distractions toward your own consciousness. Then, springboarding into transcending oneself becomes possible by connecting with the God who lives within us.

I have experienced these statements; now the written statements above as reference to more fully articulate what it is I want to discuss within faith communities. Great. It took ten years to find these statements.

Our own interiority, I think, is individual and hard to communicate. Other folks have corroborated in their own ways that such interiority can be hard to communicate. But the likes of Teresa of Avila and Augustine manage to communicate their experience!

I would like for “everyday people in church pews” to be able to talk about our interior faith experiences. Building community around sharing our encounters with God – and simple every day faith maturation – should be the privilege of everyone who is on a faith journey. I think, perhaps, that some people come to sharing such easier than I do…..

In two other books I am currently reading, I am finding more gems that offer insights into describing the experiences of religious interiority:

In his book Doors to the Sacred, Joseph Martos writes that what we experience in religious sacraments are doors that open for us the experience that which is sacred. Wow. What a way to help us articulate our experiences.
Stephen B. Bevans writes in his book Community of Missionary Disciples (a book we are reading for school) that contemplation is “God ‘gazing’ on us in love, as Pope Francis often says.” I just read this today. I needed that statement last week. I had sent my recent academic paper (above) to the priest I got matched up with to offer spiritual guidance as I do my Master’s program. He had asked me to explain verbally what I meant when I said that I had experienced God directly loving me. All I could say last week that it was like God was present as person within the space of my inward “personal space” loving me.
In Joseph Martos’ Doors to the Sacred book, I also came upon the phrase “mystical metaphysics.” I Googled that phrase. Reading the search results and tweaking my subsequent search queries led to the phrase “Catholic mystical metaphysics” and the word “ontology”(the branch of philosophy that investigates the nature of existence).

So, maybe what I am really interested in is ontology of Catholic mystical metaphysics. Hmmm….. Am I thinking to hard in trying to find a way for we “everyday people in the pews to talk to each other?” Do I just communicate less readily than other people? I have any number of books written by saints, nuns, etc. who have described their own prayer journeys and mysticism. Maybe I just need to communicate more freely. Perhaps. Yet, I also want to hear more dialogue from “every day people of faith” about how we experience our faith journeys. What’s it like when you turn to God in prayer? What’s it like when you feel God loving you? What does it feel like when you respond to those occasional “nudges” we all get occasionally that might be the Holy Spirit trying to get our attention? (and, I am still getting asked what I mean when I say “interiority,” even after writing the paper mentioned above).

We have writers such as Thomas Merton, Teresa of Avila, Edith Stein, and John of the Cross to read. Should we just satisfy ourselves with reading what they have to say about the spiritual life?

I still want to figure out how to talk more freely about the ontology of Catholic mystical metaphysics. Maybe I think too much. But, I want to build community around this topic. The U.S. Surgeon general says that we have an “epidemic of loneliness” and the subsequent health consequences of that “epidemic of loneliness.” I don’t think we are suppose to be lonely. Church buildings become places of community when we talk to each other. Even the mystic Teresa of Avila – now a Doctor of the Church – had to figure out how to articulate her experience. Surely, we “every day people” can figure out how to share with each other the experiences of our inner religious experiences to build community around the experience of our faith journeys.

I will continue working on this…..

Discussing the trajectories of our faith journeys….

June 14, 2026

I am reading a book about the domestic activities of women living in Colonial New England during the years 1650 – 1750 (Good Wives: Image and Reality….). The detective work that makes such books interests me. The book’s author combed through probate records and other such surviving documents from the time to identify aspects of people’s lives – the contents of people’s household possessions, etc. Probate records would identify things such as “this household had four rooms. “The family’s bed was kept in the parlour downstairs, while the spinning wheel was kept in one of the two upstairs rooms.” From that, deductions can be made about day-to-day domestic logistics…..

When I co-wrote my Irish great-great grandmother’s biography in 2016, we did the same sort of detective work. Much footwork to find public records combined with family interviews went into being able write the following “book cover” summary of the life of my great-great grandmother who died thirty-two years before I was born: “Harriet was born in Co. Sligo the day the U.S. Union Army reorganized during the U.S. Civil War – meaning she was born in Yeats Country two years ahead of William Butler Yeats. Ireland’s emerging railroad system allowed her family to move all over Ireland as her Schoolmaster father moved from job to job. She married in Dublin the year James Joyce was born in that city. Harriet spent the longest period of her life in Co. Wicklow. Stories survive of her reading turn-of-the-century news about the Boer War to an illiterate neighbour. Harriet spent forty years raising children with a blind spouse. She emigrated the year after the Titanic sank (three years before the 1916 uprising). She died the day the Soviets invaded Poland. Two grandsons participated in D-Day, while another participated in the invasion of Japan.”

I have three photos of Harriet. In one of those photos, she and my great-great grandfather were sitting on their front steps with two of their grandchildren (including my grandfather). Another photo taken nearly 100 years later shows me and three of my cousins sitting on those same stairs.

I was fortunate to visit the church in Co. Wicklow where Harriet’s father and her husband’s father served together on the parish vestry (i.e., parish council) in 1870.

In another strand of reading, my current graduate studies instructed us to choose an aspect of theology and/or church history to explore for a paper. I am reading the autobiography of one of the Church fathers, Doctor of the Church Augustine (Confessions).

So, what do the daily domestic activities of women in Colonial New England and the life of an Irish housewife who had thirteen pregnancies (ten of her children survived to adulthood) have to do with St. Augustine in the 4th and 5th centuries in North Africa?

The common thread is exploring and sharing the trajectories of our lives. In the case of Augustine, I am interested in Augustine’s “interiority” (a phrase I just came across a few weeks ago). I’ve been trying to figure out for several years how to get church people today to talk to each other in more depth about how we each experience our faith. I am reading – and writing about – Augustine and his Confessions with a goal toward figuring out how to more actively get people talking. I’m thinking that using the word interiority might help in getting people to identify what it is I want people to discuss.

I am hoping that during the next while, I will better develop ideas about getting people to talk to each other about how we experience our faith journeys.

Cold rainy days and God

June 8, 2026

I am watching the rain fall on this cold June morning in my Seattle-area suburb.

The heat should have been turned off a month ago. A week or so ago, I put away my space heaters that I use when I want a bit of extra heat. At the same time, I optimistically got out my air conditioning device-on-wheels (optimistically? It’s June!). At church yesterday, a fair number of people were wearing jackets during the service – my pew neighbors and I complained to each other that we were colder with our jackets on than we had been a week earlier (the church’s heating system has reportedly broken again…..).

These long-pause-looking-out-the-window moments – such as my current one this morning – offer the ability to reflect.

Yes, it’s cold, wet, and dreary in June. Yes, I’ve got a challenging personal circumstance that needs to change.

Yet, the rain gives us flowers.

Yet, we have the ability to pause and reflect about the God who loves us.

Ten years ago, I attended a church service as a person who was away from church and had no intention of returning regularly to church. However, the homily touched me in a way that brought me back to church (that story is told here). In the time that followed, I was graced with an emotionally-tangible period of God directly loving me. That grace-filled experience of being loved by God reduced the rough contours of a punctuatedly difficult period.

We are given free will. Love, by its’ very nature, is freely given and can only be received freely. …..I used to struggle with the idea of God being a three-part trinity until I read in the Catholic Catechism that God’s nature – being love – must be trinitarian (multi-selved) because love cannot exist without being shared…..God needed someone to love (i.e., love shared among God’s multi-parted self) until God created us to love. God does not force God’s love upon us. There are times, though – such as in my return-to-church experience – when God seems to try to get our attention…..

We all occasionally feel emotional nudges that seem to be trying to pull us in a particular direction. Those nudges are sometimes the Holy Spirit making an effort to get our attention.

Even in our busy, fast-paced lives, it’s good to follow those emotional nudges. God wants what’s good for us.

We live in a time when we are encouraged to focus externally. Go here, do that, by busy, be extroverted. Yet, the interiority written about by Augustine and the mystics is among the contexts where we encounter God. Of course, we also encounter God in the “Whatsoever you do for the least of my fellows, you did for me.” When I used to volunteer in the prison system, my Tuesday night visits to a combined federal-and-provincial women’s penitentiary were a time to be giving. I found – for me – that it was also a weekly respite from the pressures of my daily life. Self-giving and the experience of interiority when we go inward to be with God (rather than to be self-absorbed) are two sides of the same coin.

Some days, even the gray days provide a rainbow.

More on “Prayer – wordless sighs of the heart”… and “hearing from you”

May 21, 2026

In a previous post, “Prayer: Wordless Sighs of the Heart,” I mentioned that the Benedictine monks of Saint Meinrad Monastery mention in their book The Tradition of Catholic Prayer that “wordless sighs of the heart” is a type of prayer available to us. I love this type of prayer. Human language simply falla short for having a meaningful interaction with God in prayer. Vocabulary simply isn’t needed when we pray – we can simply be present with God. Prayer, at its’ most intimate – and therefore meaningful, is about presenting ourselves fully to the fullness of God.

In my readings, I recently came upon Paul’s letter to the Roman’s – Romans 8:26. I came upon it three times within about two weeks! Romans 8:26 says “…we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Holy Spirit intercedes [for us] with groanings too deep for words.” Super! Paul was touching on this same important theme in the early decades of Christianity!

Regular readers may have noticed that I often blog about prayer. Why? While prayer is deeply personal (it is about each of us being intimately present with God) means it takes a particular type of creativity to describe prayer well, I want everyone to experience the richness of experiencing God’s presence in prayer. Because I want everyone to have a rich experience of prayer, I have started compiling a reference list of my blog posts on prayer to make it easy for readers to find a list of my blog post on prayer. You can find that list here (please check it out!). FYI, you will see that I am also compiling other topical lists of my blog posts on that same page……

Speaking of “what matters to each of us in our faith journeys,” I am expanding the “input” of this faith blog. In addition to you – readers – receiving blog posts on faith topics I choose to write about, this blog is being opened up to hearing from you. Is there a spirituality topic that you’ve been pondering for a time? Ask us about it. Is there a faith topic you have been pondering but you haven’t found an answer? Submit your question to this blog….. A Dear Hermitage Within” page has been added to this blog’s website so you can reach out with your question. Have a question about prayer? Ask. Want to know something about Christian liturgy? Ask. Curious about some aspect of religious history? Ask. Want to inquire about some aspect of theology? Ask. If you submit a question and we plan to write about it on this blog (you would remain anonymous, of course!), we will be sure to let you know by email. FYI – I will write some blog responses to submitted questions and may sometimes invite trusted faith writers to provide insights – pastors, theologians, etc….. Be sure to visit the “submit your question” page above when you would like to submit a faith question!

The Genesis creation stor(ies), Jesus’ parables, chaos, stability, change

May 2, 2026

During this first term in my master’s in theology program, we’ve been reading through the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (the Torah/Pentateuch), the four canonical gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Book of Revelation.

Our two courses – one on the Hebrew Bible and one for the New Testament – were chosen as our first two classes to lay a groundwork. Tear down “what we thought we new about the Bible” and learn to look at it in fresh ways through the insights provided through Biblical Studies.

The two combined classes and the class textbooks have – indeed – percolated an interesting combination of insights that has captured my imagination.

In Greek – the language through which the complete Bible first came to us – the word COSMOS (order) is opposite of the word CHAOS.

In the time of Old Testament at at the time of Jesus, water represented chaos.

When Genesis tells of God creating the world (there are actually two versions of the story), the water – chaos – was separated from land. In creating the world, God created order out of chaos. God can create order in the world and create a world in which we can inhabit.

In the New Testament stories when Jesus walked on water toward the disciples and calmed the tempestuous water storm(s), these weren’t just physically miraculous. Walking on water and calming storms on the sea likewise represented calming chaos. Jesus calms the chaos in our lives.

Yet, Jesus is also the disrupter.

While the Genesis creation story is told in the ways in which tell us of order being created in our world, Jesus spoke in parables.

I learned to consider parables in more depth this term from writer Bernard Brandon Scott in his book Hear then the Parable (a commentary on the Parables of Jesus). Parables, it turns out, developed as a distinct form of communicating lessons in the geographic area of Christ during the time of Jesus. Jesus was among the first people to use parables. In telling parables, Jesus brought about social disruption. He used parables to take us from “here is something with which you are familiar (A, B, C.)” to “I hereby compare A, B, or C to ‘a better way to live’ and/or ‘X is how to get to heaven.'” He disrupted our famliar ways of living to show us his path.

All of this still applies today. When we encounter storms in life, we can turn to our God who loves us and who shelters us amidst the chaos of storms. Yet, the God who loves us as we are – as the saying goes – “loves us too much to leave us the way we are.”

It is up to us to allow God to change us into the people we are meant to be. No easy undertaking. This is involves surrender. I am not the master of my destiny. Personally, I’m attracted to the person I come closer to being when I allow God to shift me toward becoming the person I am meant to be.

Our social order comes closer to the world God wants for us when more of us spend more time allowing God to transform us toward being the people we are meant to be.

People of faith, becoming Easter people….

April 29, 2026

When I taught baptism preparation classes for parents and godparents, talking about baptism inherently required talking about Adam and Eve and “The Fall.” When we are baptized, we are given grace that helps us to reduce our tendency to sin – this human tendency to sin dates back to humanity’s fall in the Garden of Eden. When I would very quickly start talking about “The Fall” in these baptism prep classes – so that I could then get to the good part of explaining grace and baptism – I would tell parents and godparents that “the longer I am in church, the more convinced I am that ‘The Fall” happened with Adam and Eve. If you’re not sure that humanity’s ‘fall’ happened in the Garden of Eden, just turn on the news and listen to all the crazy things that we humans do. Humanity’s fall with Adam and Eve actually does an effective job of explaining our collective human faults……”

I have come to notice that the “church people” I most admire share a common quality. One way or another, each of them really, genuinely draw a connection between being people of faith to recognizing the darkest parts of themselves and facing-and-overcoming/improving those dark parts of themselves within the context of their faith. And, they talk about it. Often, this “talking about it” comes up in one-on-one conversations. I’ve heard people talk about overcoming depression, getting over being terrible to their spouses, about how there was a time when “they shouldn’t have had children” (and didn’t) to now being people who are visibly caring toward the people in their lives. The list goes on. Personally, I tend to talk about my challenges within prayer groups (a great place to find contemplative prayer groups is Contemplative Outreach).

This process of overcoming our darkest corners really pays off. We’ve all got dark corners in our lives. These are the parts of ourselves that we wouldn’t want to see described in the newspaper….. Being honest about this stuff takes courage. I think most of us are aware of the darkest parts of ourselves – whether we simply feel pulled down by it and don’t know what to do about it (that really does drag a person down emotionally) or if we take a hard, honest look at it “in the light of day.” Sometimes, getting honest about this stuff happens out of some kind of necessity (i.e., one’s particular form of darkness becomes manifest in some way that ends up requiring that it be addressed). Sometimes, people just want to become better people. No matter what path we take to really facing up to the darkest parts of ourselves, there is liberation to be found in letting God transform us. And, it really is God who transforms us. The best and most liberating transformation comes through our God who can – and will – bring about salvation.

Surrendering to letting God change our innermost selves can sometimes be terrifying. “My innermost self is ‘Who I am.’ What’s going to happen if I let God tamper with my innermost self?” What happens is that we become the people we are meant to be. We become better people. Transformation and freedom happen.

A couple of days ago, I had one of those “Murphy’s law” afternoons when “everything that can go wrong” does go wrong” (or, “things go wrong in ways that we couldn’t have even thought of”). I started coming unraveled. I recognized the unraveling when I shouted about that day’s version of “Murphy’s Law” and realized that my behavior was going to upset my cat (who had no control over my behavior). “Oh, my cat doesn’t need to be subjected to my unraveling.” I’ve been “doing church” long enough to know that this “unravelling” is no longer necessary when Murphy shows up and imposes his law. Further, I have experienced the process of God improving me enough to be able to shift toward that transforming process. I emotionally sat down and tapped into the transformative process I have learned in church. The unraveling began to reverse. There’s freedom in that. We don’t have be stuck in the worst parts of ourselves. We can become the people we want to see described in the newspaper (or, the church bulletin).

We are currently in the Easter season – the fifty days from Easter to Pentecost. God died for our sins and rose again so that we can join “the Risen Christ.” Our surrender in which we allow God to transform us means tapping into Jesus’s death and resurrection. This is truly beautiful. Transformative. It’s freely available to all of us. God wants to be in our lives. “Being the people we were meant to be” is an available option. Happy Easter.

Kim Burkhardt blogs about faith at The Hermitage Within. Thank you for reading this faith blog and for sharing it with your friends. While you are here, please feel welcome to provide support to sustain this blog ($$). You can also $$ support this blog by clicking here here to do your Amazon shopping (if you click here before you start your Amazon shopping, Amazon pays us a commission when you shop via the link provided).

“Be not afraid”

April 14, 2026

We church goers like to think of ourselves as faithful people.

If one spends enough time in church, one is bound to hear about trusting in God. “Bring all of your challenges to God.”

I periodically ponder the presence of fear in people’s lives (both in my life and in the lives of other people). Everyone is afraid of something. Fear of getting seriously ill. Fear of losing a job. Fear of being alone. Fear of being publicly shamed. Fear of losing one’s home. Fear of being attacked at night on a “scary street corner.” Fear of making a wrong decision. Fear if making a major change in one’s life. There’s an endless list of things people fear…..

Perhaps I am able to ponder the topic of fear because the topics I fear sometimes differ from other people. This brings fear into stark perspective. I’d rather volunteer in a federal prison than carry a cell phone to “protect myself in an emergency.” I prefer traveling alone (this makes it easier to give my full attention to experiencing the place I am visiting), while apparently many people want to be social while travelling and some people are “afraid to travel alone.” A couple of years ago, several friends protested when I told them I was going to go camping alone ‘off road” with no cell phone (excuse me, but there’s no cell phone reception where I was going anyway…..) – one friend was so concerned that he insisted on paying my campground fees if I would go to a campground instead so that I could risk camping next to a crazy troublemaker instead of going-it-alone (the pay-campground-fees friend reads this blog – I can imagine the phone call I’m going to get…)….. My sisters also go camping off-road alone – maybe it’s a quirky family trait…. A couple years ago, another friend commented on his admiration of my willingness to occasionally pack up alone and move to a new city (I haven’t got the foggiest idea of how to be afraid of doing that – I like the adventure….). Sometimes I don’t understand why the people around me are afraid of things that don’t scare me, while other people don’t understand why I am afraid of the things I fear……

At present, I – as a condo dweller – am learning about condo association boards. I’ve been told that there are condo boards (not mine, fortunately) who drag their feet on making decisions about various matters affecting their condo communities. I suspect that this dragging-of-feet happens for various reasons – ranging from lack of knowledge about how to make certain decisions to fear (fear of not knowing what to do, fear of making the wrong decision, etc.).

In any event, most-or-all of us sometimes let fear stop us from doing things that are in our best interest. Myself included. There is an adage that perhaps “fear ought to be classed with stealing. It seems to cause more trouble.”

Yet…

One cannot truly be a person of faith – faithful – if we make decisions based on fear. When we let fear immobilize us, we are not trusting God. “My fear and/or the-thing-I-fear is bigger than God’s ability to get me through the-thing-I-fear.” “My fear belongs to me. My fear is mine – it’s intrinsically part of me. I’m not going to surrender my innermost self and/or my most gripping fears to God. God can’t have my innermost self.”

Truly being a person of faith means allowing God to walk us through our fears. God is for real and God is not smaller than our fears. Allowing God to walk us through our fears is often unlikely to result in us experiencing “the worst case scenario of what we fear” (i.e., “I’m afraid I’m going to experience ‘X-or-Y tragic outcome’ if I don’t sit at home immobolized by my fear”). I have experienced in recent years is that some of my best growth has happened when I surrendered to letting God walk me through something difficult challenge. Solutions are often found and I get through challenges in happier ways that I could have on my own. While some situations are not fixable, trusting God in difficult situations often ends up with me maturing in good and useful ways…….

Many are familiar with the popular hymn Be Not Afraid. This isn’t just a “nice song for church on Sunday” or a comforting song to listen to at funerals (while it is those things). Truly being a person of faith has to mean letting God walk us through the things we most fear.

The Old Testament and today’s liturgical church services……

March 11, 2026

When I was accepted into in my master’s in theology program, we were instructed to start reading Liturgy of the Hours, daily divine readings read around the world by priests, religious, and interested lay people.

This excerpt from the Book of Exodus (33:7-11) is included in this morning’s Liturgy of the Hours:

⁷Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the “tent of meeting.” Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. ⁸And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent. ⁹As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the Lord spoke with Moses. ¹⁰Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshiped, each at the entrance to their tent. ¹¹The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent.

For anyone familiar with modern church services, it looks to me that this passage likely contributed to the historical development of today’s church services for denominations that are liturgy-based. In liturgy-based church services, everyone stands during important points in the service.

Several years ago, a musician friend observed that important parts of a church service can be identified by watching the congregation. He observed, “Catholics stand for important points of the service, while at AME (African Methodist Episcopal) singing is done during important parts of the service” (he’s been the staff musician for both denominations at different times. He said it took awhile for him as a musician to notice this distinction).

Like my music friend, I find it interesting to observe the flow of religious services.

In the earliest days of Christianity, Christians met in homes and shared meals together – something along the lines of breaking bread together as Christ did with the apostles at “the last supper” (I am generalizing very broadly). From what I understand of church history, meeting in “churches” – public buildings – began after Constantine legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire in the early 300’s. It took time after that for the church liturgy to start looking like the church services that we recognize today. Occasional adjustments to church services continue to happen – such as switching from Latin to the local language following Vatican II.

Side note….. Has anyone else noticed the subtle change in church services that I’ve noticed following COVID? Prior to COVID, the “Catholic calisthenics” during liturgical services would include parishioners putting down the kneelers when it’s time to kneel. Often (though maybe not universally), there would then be lifting-and-lowering of the kneelers during each portion of the “calisthenics” portion of the service….. Then….when services started up again following COVID closures, I noticed that it became more common for parishioners to simply leave the kneelers “down” during the entire “calisthenics” portion of the service (i.e., leaving the kneelers down while standing and then simply returning to kneeling on kneelers that are left down). Now, it seems that increasing numbers of people are returning to “lifting and lowering” the kneelers during “calisthenics.”

Wishing everyone a fruitful Lenten season…..

Moses and Religious Symbolism

March 7, 2026

Many of us learn the religious symbolism of the Exodus. The Israelites fleeing slavery in Egypt for the freedom of the Promised Land represents spiritual transformation. On the way from Egypt to the Promised Land, the parting of the red sea symbolizes leaving slavery. Wandering for 40 years in the desert before entering the Promised Land was punishment for disobeying God. In spiritual transformation, we are freed from our personal bondage of emotional/mental/life slavery for the transformational freedom God provides us. When we don’t fully follow God today, we wander in a personal desert rather than enter the Promised Land promised via a full relationship with our God.

Beyond already being familiar with the symbolism of Exodus, I’ve been struck by learning in this week’s theological studies about how Moses’ demographics represent a multiplicity of ethnic and religious symbolism that fully allowed him to be the leader leading his fellow Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt. For example:

As a Hebrew adopted into Pharaoh’s royal Egyptian household by Pharaoh’s daughter and then growing up to marry a Midianite wife, Moses was in a distinct position to mediate between these varying ethnic groups.
As a Levite, Moses belonged to Israel’s priestly tribe. This qualified him to be Israelite’s spiritual leader. He was therefore qualified to mediate between his fellow Israelites and God [including receive the ten commandments), unite the twelve tribes (a nation-building rite of passage toward a unified Israel), and to lead his fellow Israelites out of slavery].

In the end, though, Moses himself died before the Israelites made it to the Promised Land. I find myself wondering if is representative of we humans falling short (i.e., we know that it is only God who can fully lead us to Promised Land)?

During this Lenten season, we can ask ourselves what we are doing to approach the Promised Land. How do we – individually and collectively – remain in bondage that keeps us from a full relationship with God and from being in better relationship with the people around us? How are we failing to allow God to turn us into the people that God intends for us to be? Really answering these questions and grappling with what this implies can be uncomfortable. Not answering these questions – and remaining where we are – would ultimately be more uncomfortable (and, really, irresponsible). To truly be (or to become) people of faith, we must step up and do what’s necessary to allow God to bring us to the Promised Land.

Matthew 22:34-40: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Anything that doesn’t measure up to loving God, loving our neighbors, and becoming the person we are truly suppose to be is going to prevent us from allowing God to bring us to the Promised Land.