When The Teacher Comes

FACING OURSELVES HONESTLY is a bitter pill to swallow; we hope it is also good medicine. At the end of our rope, a guide or mentor can be just what is needed to move from self-pity to wholeness. If we can learn to trust. Dante fears that the bitter but gracious truths he had learned about himself will die with him, leaving no opportunity to be translated into life. He is ready for a teacher, but the Teacher has not come. Paul Patterson continues to channel Dante's imagination through the part of The Divine Comedy. In the twilight

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Bringing Yourself To Work

WE HAVE BROUGHT our children and pets to work and regularly dress down on Fridays to improve relations and productivity. Now it is time to do something really revolutionary – bring ourselves to work! It is odd to consider something taken for granted so much as lugging our personality and life into the office day by day; yet, my experience has been that most employees bring only a fragment of themselves to work. Call it the "work self" or the "company automaton"; whatever it is called, it is far from a full-blown person. We are not getting enough out of

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Ash Wednesday

My first encounter of Ash Wednesday was while I had a job at St. Joseph's Vocational School in Winnipeg. Being the only Protestant working there, I was shocked, even somewhat horrified, and leery to ask why every student and our teacher Irene Coulter had a black, cross-like smudge on their foreheads as they entered room. Choosing not to see it as a weird hallucination, I decided to ask what those smudges were about. Irene, a none-too-observant Catholic, gave me the formal answer, "Ash Wednesday is the day that kicks off Lent, a run up to Easter for Catholics." "Okay," I

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Paul and the Moral Philosophers

Linda, reading 1 Thessalonians 1:4-6: For we know brothers, loved by God, that he has chosen you because our gospel came you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit, and with deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake. Eldon: The moral philosophers stressed the importance of reason and reliance in yourself for moral growth. And Paul refers the moral life to God and the power of the Spirit. In this verse He says that he has chosen you. So, first of all, it wasn't your idea to begin with. It

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