Center for Action and Contemplation faculty member Brian McLaren introduces the 2026 Daily Meditations theme: “Good News for a Fractured World” — Sunday, January 4, 2026 [Brian McLaren] Our world is deeply fractured. We see the symptoms all around us. We see it in politics. We see it in social media. We see it in... Continue Reading →
Anne Lamott on “All things new”
A New Year's Day reflection by Anne Lamott [Anne Lamott] I will flinch a bit today whenever someone exhorts me to have a happy new year. It might be the word “happy,” which is so giddy and clown-shoe slappy, in combination with my walking personality disorder. It‘s also that the emphasis will be on Hap,... Continue Reading →
Inspiration for the New Year
On New Years Day I typically share W. H. Auden’s poem New Year Letter, a truly imaginative and insightful piece I commend to you once again. This year however, I want to share something different, a sort of what I got for Christmas this year kind of report. I have almost finished "Joyride: A Memoir"... Continue Reading →
A New Year Greeting
At a time when poets and poetic enthusiasts are more easily look outward, bursting with resolutions, memories and convictions, W H Auden (1907 – 1973) has us look inward, to the miraculous biology within our very bodies, a liveliness which continues unabated and under-appreciated, until life flows from it. Of Auden’s sumptuous expression, itself informed and... Continue Reading →
The Full (Winter) Monte – What a difference a few months makes
August 2021 was devastating for the residents of Monte Lake BC. A spin-off from the White Rock Lake Wildfire roared through the community, sometime pulsing up a single side of a long driveway, and at other time consuming a historic church leaving picnic benches only feet away untouched. Images of the aftermath show residential devastation... Continue Reading →