faith – Spiritual accompaniment

Advent and Christmas: Being Present to One Another

December 23, 2025

I visited a friend yesterday. She’s terminally ill and is aware that “this is probably her last Christmas.” She and I have a storied bond. Our mothers were friends since they were four years old. Then, our mothers brought her and I into the world three days apart. Now that she’s entering the final phase of her life, I’ve thought of something said two or three years ago by another friend – a triplet (two identical sisters and a third fraternal sister). One of the identicals was dying, the other identical said “I don’t know how to do this” (i.e., how to be “alone” – she’s never “not had” her identical). In my own measured way, I understand – I’ve never “not had” the friend who was born three days before me.

I was lying awake in the early hours of this morning, unable to sleep and pondering yesterday’s visit. These ponderings relate to a host of other recent ponderings – there’s a lot to unpack. Bottom line, being present in people’s lives matters.

Yesterday – for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere – was the first day after the Winter Solstice. The day after the shortest day of the year. Yesterday had a brief more amount more of daylight that the day before.

When we are truly present in each other’s lives, that presence matters. Being consciously present brings light and joy into people’s lives.

During this morning’s 2:00 am hour, I laid awake in bed listening to my cat’s breath (she finally sleeps with me, two years after I adopted her). I thought of the times when either someone has been present in my life or when I have been present in someone’s life. All of us remember such moments in our lives. We can all bring to mind stories of people who have present to us and times we have been present for someone else.

There’s a Christmas lesson here.

Christ came into the world to be present with humanity. We celebrate this every Christmas (for those interested in liturgical seasons, since we celebrate Jesus’ birthday on December 25 we celebrate Jesus’s conception – the Feast of the Anunciation – nine months earlier on March 25. Further, we celebrate the Feast Day of John the Baptist – who “leapt in his mother’s womb” when Mary came to visit his pregnant mother – on June 24).

We are called by our faith to be present in people’s lives and to bring positivity where we can:

Churches are present in the community by providing social services (soup kitchens, food banks, etc.). We are all called to meet the needs in our communities through active volunteerism.
One of my friends has taken on leading a grief and loss support group – a great service.
We can all find ways to communicate the message of God’s loving presence. Through our baptism, we are called to be “priests, prophets, and kings.”

When I tell stories about being present to other people I become animated (at other times, I am occasionally told that my conversational tone is rather flat or monotone!). I am seeing that other people’s willingness to be present in my life and me being present to other people has been integral to the times when my life has been most transformed.

Please don’t get the idea that I always to do a great job of being present in other people’s lives. This blog post came to be because I am seeing the poignancy – both from being present and from having people be present with me – of how being present transforms lives. All of us have someone with whom we can be present. During this Advent and Christmas season, we can all share the joy of Christ’s love.

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 ($$).

Integrating ourselves into our faith

December 11, 2025

Sometimes, multiple threads weave themselves into our awareness such that we come to recognize each thread as belonging to one tapestry.

Such has happened in reference to several books I’ve come across in recent years.

Several years ago, a comment someone made about “stages of faith” led me to James Fowler’s book of that title (Stages of Faith). I learned in that book about the developmental faith stages we progress through as we age and (hopefully!) mature. I come back to that book occasionally.

Since then, I have come across faith-related books such as The Deeply Formed Life and a book called Integral Spirituality (there are actually several books with that phrase part of their titles). While I haven’t yet read those two books, I brought them home to at least ponder their titles and/or topics. This led me to a phrase within Catholicism called Integral Human Development – the full development of each person.

I considered these books and topics as I explored how to fully bring together what then seemed to be disparate (compartmentalized) aspects of my life and the experience of living as a person of faith.

Truly, being a person of faith must mean what I will call “integral faith development.”

To truly be people of faith, we can’t be “church people” on Sunday morning, work people during the week (Monday to Friday, 9:00 – 5:00 – or whenever we work), athletes at the gym or the beach, etc.

Being a person of faith means that our faith must integrate into every aspect of our lives. And, every aspect of our lives must integrate into our faith.

This doesn’t mean that everyone who goes to church should give up their job, their athletic activities, etc. to become “church ladies.”

It means that we can’t compartmentalize our Sunday morning pew from the rest of our lives.

When I first read James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, I came to recognize that the various aspects of my own human development had developed at different rates. I did well academically in school – my mental development was great! The development of my social, emotional, and career aspects were “all over the map” in terms of development. My faith development? I had been away from church for twenty years and had left my faith development in a high school phase. Yikes! I don’t think I’m alone in this. I am calling this a “mountain peaks” approach to “non-integrated human development.” I was born in a mountainous geographic region and now live in another region where we have mountain peaks, several snow-capped (inactive) volcanoes, and an ocean – I notice each mountain peak within a mountain range being a different height. When we live our lives in such a way that each aspect of our development – emotions, mental development, social development, faith development – is in a different age-phase, we are living with differing developmental “mountain peaks” within who we are. Such a non-integrated way of living doesn’t result in personal health, well-being, or maturity. When I recognized that the then-segmented aspects of myself had been developing at different rates, I set out to bring the various aspects of myself into developmental alignment. I reviewed various models of faith and psychological development and “mapped out” which of my own mountain peaks were at higher and lower levels of development. I gave myself a couple of years to bring the lower mountain peaks up to approximately the same age-level of development as the higher peaks. The end result? A more content and more functional self.

However, there’s more to this than just a well-developed and well-rounded self. While the outcome I described in the previous paragraph is absolutely beneficial, the pew we sit in at church doesn’t exist solely to be a self-help pew. Sitting in a pew on Sunday and being a person of faith is about “love God and love your neighbor,” fully growing into a relationship with God, allowing God to turn us into the people God wants us to be, being present and lovingly impactful in the lives of God’s children (we are all God’s children – including the driver who smashed up your car, the politician you don’t like, the bully at your child’s school, the operator who accidentally dropped your call, the relative you dislike, etc. and etc.).

We can’t fully live into being a person of faith by compartmentalizing each part of our lives. We have to bring our lives into our faith – our joys, our successes, our athletic activities, our family events, our recent car accident, our difficult boss, etc. We have to bring our faith into all aspects of our lives – finding ways to talk about being a person of faith in the community (even if we live in a secular city), into driving and the crows we hate (I confessed in the confessional once that my irritation with heavy traffic was resulting in angry irritation directed at crows who were in the roadway. I learned to pray the Hail Mary while driving…..), etc.

We are people of faith when we integrate all aspects of our lives. We grow into living the Gospels in our lives.

Entering Advent, Entering Light

December 1, 2025

The life of faith turns our ideas upside down.

As we entered a new church year this past weekend, we moved out of the liturgical color of green. When I sit at traffic light and see the light turn green, I – in my impatience – start talking to the driver ahead of me: “Okay, driver who hasn’t instantly accelerated (thereby slowing down my effort to get where I’m going), green means take your foot off your brake and put your foot on the accelerator. Green means go.”

Instead of getting the green light to go full speed ahead during Lent, we shift into purple.

“Great,” we might be tempted to say. “Purple is the color for royalty. We shift into royal gear.”

Not so fast. During Advent, we are invited to slow down. Further, it is not us who is the royalty.

On the first Sunday of Advent, we heard in the second reading – Romans 13: 11-14 – to waken from our sleep. We heard to throw off the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light. We heard in the Gospel that we know neither the day nor the hour when Christ will return. We await in watchfulness.

For all this upside-downness, turning to Christ and Christ’s royal return really does turn our life upside-down. A right-side-up, as we discover.

“For it is no longer I, but Christ who lives in me”- Galatians 2:20. When we let Christ live in us, he transforms our very being (during this time of both waiting and living anew during the Catholic both/and!). We become a new creation. The light of Christ – during this darkest time of the geographic year (for those of us in the Northern hemisphere) – transforms our very being.

We are a week past Christ the King. It is Christ who is the royalty. We, as servants, must learn to serve. The more we learn to live in faith’s juxtapositions, the more God leads us into the fullness of life that God intends for us. (Also, the people who know me and who read this blog remind me occasionally that I sometimes grow into the concepts I write about slower than I write about them. Humility is good for us!)

Book Review: The Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church

November 9, 2025

This book – The Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church: A History (author: Joseph E. Kelly) – is anything but a dry read.

More than just a book for religious historians, this book provides wide details and context on how church leaders came together – and sometimes didn’t come together – over the centuries to debate and articulate Christian theology.

I count myself among the bibliophiles who believe that every word of a book should be read to consider the book as having been read. In the case of this book, there is so much historical detail about each council, and historical context surrounding each council, and absorbing trivia that I am finding myself selectively choosing how much to summarily read about each time period the first time through this book (I may satisfy myself with selectively reading the book once through and keeping it a reference book). “Really?,” I found myself pondering. “A, B, X, Y really happened at this or that council or during this or that period in Church history?!?!?” As I read, I am scribbling trivia on sticky-notes to tell friends and fellow church folk about what I am learning about the history of the Christianity’s twenty-one ecumenical councils. As many of us know, the first council was the Council of Nicea in 325 through to Vatican II in the 1960’s.

Just this afternoon, I learned that an Empress was involved in the second council of Nicea in 786/7. Some councils were more ecumenical than others – in some cases, the councils were more heavily attended by bishops from the east than bishops from the west; today, individual denominations decide for themselves which of these historical councils were “ecumenical” (of note, the book’s author provides a listing within the book of which denominations consider with councils to have been ecumenical).

For non-historians, reading this book seriously will take the reader into reading additional books to learn more about the history and context of what was happening at the time of each council.

There’s plenty in this book for both historians and fans of religious trivia. It’s a book that really needs to be read over time so as to really absorb the content covered for each time period.

Salvation history, the universe

September 5, 2025

I have lately been pondering how the grand scope of the universe – the many number of galaxies, etc. – factors into what God pays attention to.

When we think of God – with the finite perspective of people – we tend to think of God in terms of God’s relationship with us humans. About humanity’s “salvation history.” We humans are created in God’s image – we are loved by God so much that God gave his only son for our salvation. We humans are infinitely loved by God.

For much of Judeo-Christian history, humanity’s understanding of the universe – and the size of the universe – was much smaller than the understanding we have now. It was much simpler, in a sense, to think of God solely in terms of God’s relationship to our salvation history.

We now know so much more about the grandeur of the size of the universe.

To think of us now in terms of being made in God’s image and for us to be God’s children takes on a perspective of a very different scale.

God is infinite enough to love us and “know us by name” and “know the number of hairs on our head” AND simultaneously be engaged in the astro-physics/geology of a VERY LARGE universe. Wow. We now receive photos of galaxies far beyond anything people knew in previous centuries. Amazing. And, this makes God even more amazing to us – that God can “know the number of hairs on our head” and simultaneously know the full geographic scope of all the galaxies that exist. Does God watch in wonder at the colors and contours of various galaxies?

Yet, we with our human limitations struggle with the comparatively finite question of how to do a better job of “love God and love our neighbor.” Back to earth….. What can we do today to be good to our families, friends, neighbors?

The Hermitage Within (an important location!)

June 22, 2025

Book and Topic: The Hermitage Within — The Hermitage Within

I was looking up a url link to another book I am currently reading to prepare a book review; while looking up that other book, I happily came across the book The Hermitage Within on Liturgical Press’s website (I read a lot of books by Liturgical Press – they have great books!).

I wish I had thought of this phrase “The Hermitage Within” and had chosen this title as the name for my blog. This phrase gets to the heart of what I want to convey in this blog….

Liturgical Press summarizes this book with articulation I’ve been seeking to describe about people’s inner experience: “Not everyone can, or should, live as a hermit. Yet all Christians need an inner hermitage, a place apart where we come face-to-face with our true selves, and listen to the still small voice of God. It is a place of silence, of fear and fascination, of anguish and grace. The writer of this profound yet simple volume encourages us to find our own inner hermitage—a place of calm and contemplation, apart from the demands of the modern world, a place so silent that we can hear God. The desert, the mountain, and the temple provide the focus of the anonymous author’s reflections. He meditates on the wilderness experiences of such biblical persons as Jesus, John the Baptist, and Mary Magdalen. He considers the place held in the Christian story by Mount Sinai, the Mount of Olives, and Calvary. He ponders the idea of temples, using such images as our inner temple and Christ the temple, the foundation of the Church.”

I encourage everyone to connect with and cultivate regular time spent in your inner hermitage – such time can and should be nourishing. Western culture largely encourages us to be outwardly focused….. Sometimes it can be tempting to avoid the challenges of encountering the difficult aspects of our inner experience. Yet we must encounter these difficult aspects of our own inner experience, wrestle with these aspects of our experience, and surrender this to God’s healing grace. Further, there is much richness available to us within our own inner hermitage. It is in our own inner hermitage that we experience both the essence of our own self and a relationship with the divine. Yes, our own inner hermitage is an important place where we can “allow God in” so God can foster God’s healing grace in our lives.

Daily time spent alone in our own inner hermitage is important for encountering and cultivating those aspects of our life experience that can only be experienced by going inward. Going inward is an opportunity to experience rich vibrancy. For more of my reflections on our inner hermitage, visit my previous post Geography of Grace.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechis t. If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (it’s free – thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).

Inspiring other’s faith by talking about our own brokenness

June 12, 2025

Stained glass windows at Assumption Church, Bellingham

I was struck by a recent article by Seattle Bishop Frank Schuster published in Northwest Catholic. In that article, Bishop Schuster (a friendly guy!) quotes both the famed Archbishop Fulton Sheen and poet-and-opium-addict Francis Thompson. Francis Thompson (who is new to me!) wrote poetic ideas such as “I fled [God], down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years, I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind; and in the midst of tears, I hid from Him and under running laughter.”

In our current times – when the U.S. surgeon general is talking about the dangers and health consequences of an “epidemic of loneliness,” I rather think we would do well to talk to other from a place of genuineness – including talking more often and more frankly about our own brokenness.

When we really talk about our human brokenness, we connect meaningfully with other people. Less isolation. Further, really talking about our human brokenness somehow allows us to see and connect with meaningful with the love and spiritual nourishment that God offers to us. It is, after all, in our brokenness that we need God.

When we interact with people, we are typically encouraged to “put our best foot forward.” We talk about how to achieve more, succeed more. We post photos of our great moments on social media. Yet, many people are also lonely, socially isolated. Too often, people are not connecting with people in faith communities or finding spiritual nourishment. Part of the solution to our woes, I think, is to really express ourselves – including our brokenness. In talking about our brokenness, we somehow become more receptive to the loving grace offered to us by God.

Try talking about your brokenness. Listen for God’s loving grace.

Book Review: Ars Celebrandi

June 5, 2025

This book, written for priests to inspire artful presiding at mass, brings to life the nuts and bolts of how the Catholic mass brings liturgy – the work of the people – is celebrated. For the non-ordained among us, Ars Celebrandi: Celebrating and Concelebrating Mass provides insight into how the liturgy is designed to invigorate the faith of the faithful.

In practical terms, this book picks up where the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (the “GIRM”) ends….. The GIRM is the instruction manual of “how to do a Catholic mass,” whereas Ars Celebrandi gets into the art of how to preside.

Two examples of this book’s insights come from the foreward of Ars Celebrandi (written by Bishop Mark Seitz):

“The liturgy is the action of the entire people of God who are being more perfectly formed into the Body of Christ. The Second Vatican Council’s seminal teaching that the people of God are called to full, conscious, and active participation is based upon this fundamental recognition.”

“The liturgy, as we know, is a language and a certain style of communication that comes down to us from the ages but is also constantly adapting under the guidance of the Spirit in every age. It a language of signs and symbols that are read universally by people in the church. To be sure, there are regional and cultural aspects that are rightly represented as local communities worship, but these are secondary to the expressions that unite us across times and places.”

Then, we lay readers learn in this book about the complexity of presiding at church services. For example:

“[Presiding at a liturgy] involve a marriage of books and ministers. The liturgical norms [i.e., what is suppose to be done] encounter a real-time relationship with the individual persons ordained to carry them out….The relationship presumes that priests know the liturgical norms. However, the rules are complex. The books detailing them are many. Some laws keep changing….Furthermore, not every aspect of liturgy is prescribed. When presiding, a typical priest is suppose to do certain things, is free to do certain other things, and takes freedom to do even more….” [Subsequent paragraphs delve into specific examples of these “certain things” and “certain other things.}

Reading this book is of interest for we lay people in that we become more observant of the nuts and bolts of what happens at church. A book worth reading.

Our faith stages: developmental growth

May 15, 2025

Growing in our faith is meant to involve life-long growth. Our religious understanding isn’t meant to stop after completing Sunday School. Just as our growth in other aspects of life continue maturing into adulthood, so should our faith.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) says the following: adult faith formation “fosters a baptismal spirituality for adults…to embrace the invitation and challenge of an ever deepening faith in Jesus.”

On many levels, our human experience involves continuing emotional and mental development throughout our adult lives. Job training develops us for the workforce. Continuing education and book reading foster our intellectual development. Just as we learn adult levels of emotional maturity throughout our lives and train as adults for workforce competence, adult faith formation must move beyond an introductory level to mature. Our faith life can only continue to mature through intentional development.

Individuals who grow up in a faith tradition and then continue to develop their knowledge and perceptions about religion – and engagement with their faith – navigate maturing stages described by development psychologists and theologians such as James Fowler.

For those who grow up in a faith tradition, learning one’s faith tradition is experienced early in life with sacraments, attending services, learning prayers, learning basic tenet’s of one’s faith tradition. For those who come to a faith tradition later, on, faith formation happens….well, later. Teen years and/or the early twenties are often a time for faith reflection and perhaps struggle. Do I believe in and accept the faith tradition I have been raised in? Can I see a path to greater and deeper faith maturity in my current faith tradition or another tradition? For those who continue on within an organized faith tradition, the teen-to-early-adult period is also one of transition: figuring out religious meaning on new levels (what are the underlying concepts represented by the symbolism of my faith tradition?, etc.), taking a deeper level of new responsibility for one’s faith (i.e., “this faith tradition was given to me as a child, now I’m evaluating my decision about if and how to stay, how to participate.” “I was given A, B, or C religious concepts as a child….What do these concepts mean to me now? Am I seeing these concepts differently or on a new level??). beyond “taking things at face value” or just “reciting back what you’ve heard.”).

As we navigate an adult level of faith, some adults need to navigate the faith stages of youth if those stages were not navigated earlier in life. Then – if we continue to grow in faith as adults – we surrender into additional levels of understanding faith and finding our way to new levels of relationship with God (and, therefore, with one another!).

The opportunity for faith to continue to develop and mature, however, is often stunted when there is no continued connection as an adult to faith formation. Adults can be surprised – if they take time away from religion or don’t engage with “beyond Sunday” faith formation within their religious tradition – to find out that their faith tradition offers a deeper level of understanding faith on a level of “come to weekend services and take faith concepts literally.”

An adult faith is one that continues to mature developmentally – deciding to take personal responsibility for one’s faith path, thinking through the faith concepts one was taught while growing up (if one grew up in a faith tradition), surrendering to new levels of understanding of religious concepts, etc. Many individuals who live an active faith as adults engage in – and experience – such maturing faith stages. Pastors recognize parishioners who navigate through such stages. Authors such as Jane Regan write about cultivating the maturing faith of adults (check out her book, “Toward an Adult Church“).

Further, there is the need for “life-long learning” of what faith traditions have to offer. There are boundless amounts of religious content available for we lay people to lean into – and an endless amount of ways for us to learn to bring that content into our lives. I am glad to be journeying with you via this blog.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechis t (and is a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). Blogging is sustainable via blog readership (i.e. readers/subscribers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).

List: How many ways to pray (types of prayer)?

May 10, 2025

variety of prayer options available within Catholicism.

Catholic prayer is a vibrant and varied tradition, bringing to fullness a life-giving relationship between us and God. Jesus came “that we might have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). “…prayer is not merely an exchange of words, but it engages the whole person in a relationship with God the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit” (U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, USCCB).

How many ways are there to pray?

The essence of prayer is communication, a relationship with God, a being-with or being-in-the-presence-of. When we find a relationship with God – an interactive, two-way interaction rather than a one-way monologue (we wouldn’t relate to the people in our lives exclusively via uni-directional monologues!) – there comes a discovery that God is present with us in prayer.

A friend said to me, “prayer is a very personal communion with God that is meant to be personal, and unique to you….People are… very different in their personal experience in prayer, and that in itself is a beautiful thing.”

Just as we have many differing relationships with the various people in our lives – and a variety of ways that we communicate with the people in our lives – there are any number of ways of communicating with God. A prayer style that works for one person may be very different than what works for the next person. Here are several approaches to prayer:

Rote prayer (formal, memorized prayers – these are often provided to us by our houses of worship). Prayers such as the Lord’s Prayer are full of meaning and help us learn to pray. Such prayers give us ready prayer content that we can easily put to use.
Psalms. The Book of Psalms – which were meant to be sung – are summarized by Wikipedia thus: the Book of Psalms are “an anthology of Hebrew religious hymns…including hymns or songs of praise, communal and individual laments, royal psalms, imprecation, and individual thanksgivings. The book also includes psalms of communal thanksgiving, wisdom, pilgrimage, and other categories.”
“Talking to God.” Our spontaneous thoughts and words directed to God. God wants to have a relationship with us; relationships are two-way, be open to feeling God’s presence in response.
Contemplative Prayer. Resting reflectively in prayer, without a need for words or any human language. Contemplative prayer can – and for some people, does – include a sense of God’s presence in prayer. For more information about contemplative prayer, visit Contemplative Outreach.
Praying the Rosary. The rosary is a reflective way of praying a set of rote prayers with a formulaic set of Catholic prayer beads (focusing time on specified topics). Instructions for praying the rosary is available here.
Lectio Divina. Lectio Divina “describes a way of reading the Scriptures whereby we gradually let go of our own agenda and open ourselves to what God wants to say to us” (this particular description provided by the Carmelites).
Singing at church. “Those who sing pray twice” (a popular phrase in churches).
Intercessory prayer. Intercessory prayer that we pray for other people. We come to God with the challenges of those who are in need of support.

My favorite Catholic pray-ers:

Teresa of Avila, (16th-century mystic, Doctor of the Church, Carmelite nun, reformer of the Carmelite religious order, Carmelite saint)
John of the Cross (16th-century mystic, Doctor of the Church, Carmelite monk and priest, co-reformer of the Carmelite religious order, Carmelite saint)
Edith Stein, Carmelite nun, Carmelite saint
Fr. Thomas Keating, founder of Contemplative Outreach

Books for further reading:

Clinging: The Experience of Prayer (Emilie Griffin)

The Tradition of Catholic Prayer (The Monks of Meinrad Monastery)