There is a piece ancient spiritual wisdom that is widely known. It says “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can move mountains”. I have recently realized that that saying puts the emphasis less on the size of my faith and more on the size of my Higher Power [hereafter HP]. … More Mustard Seed Faith
[Names are changed]. Dear Helen, Neither you nor I had that. Your sisters, Amy and Patricia, had that person, namely you. My younger sister had that person in me. I have seen that Amy and Patricia trust and revere you. I saw it in their eyes as they looked at you at the meeting a … More The Gift of Trusting Again
George Caywood At Union Rescue Mission where I worked I often heard long term volunteers say things like “Before I started volunteering at URM I had no idea how homeless I was spiritually and emotionally”. On the other hand I lost volunteers because When they realized that homeless folks were just like them it made the … More Volunteers At Union Rescue Mission
There is a tension between the urgent and the important. One of the things that went wrong for me at Union Rescue Mission was that the frantic urgency of running the mission made it hard for me me to remain God centered. I began getting to the mission at 5:30 or 6:00 AM. That greatly … More On The urgent And The Important
This afternoon I watched “Saving Private Ryan”. The whole movie is about sparing a mother who had lost 3 sons in Second World War battles from losing her fourth son, Private Ryan. A squad was sent into a battle zone to find Private Ryan and to send him home. The Squad that was sent after … More Man And Woman
I have had some marvelous experiences when a friend calls me up and asks me to lunch. -One of the best was when I had about a year in the program. After a meeting Anita, a happily safely married woman asked me if I wanted to have lunch with her At lunch, we laughed and … More Great lunches
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 Years ago, I read a rather graphic account of the sacrifice of babies in the ancient Near East. I wish I had not read it. I find it disturbing at this moment even though I read it decades ago. The sacrifice of babies is shocking to me. It leads me to … More War and Killing Babies
All my life, I have felt a deep loneliness. The persistence of the loneliness has been frightening. It has seemed to me, that the consistent loneliness was inarguable proof that something was wrong with me. I tried to talk myself out of the lonely feelings. I tried to uncover wounds out of my boyhood that … More Roots of my Loneliness
When I worked at Union Rescue Mission, I was sometimes in charge of the Dryout Room where men detoxed. That meant that every few hours I would go to the Dryout Room and check on the three or four men who were detoxing there. If they asked me to, I would pray with them, but … More Being Real
Thanks Lini. There is no other way to enjoy God’s dearness but through surrender. Believe me I have tried many other easier ways. What I have done good or bad are totally irrelevant. It is a clue to how lost I am that surrendering to infinite, total love seems like it is so difficult for … More Surrender
George Caywood 