Everyday, Dr. Howell writes a reflection, a spiritual practice, an inquiry prompt, and a prayer.
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Embodiment Part 6
Transforming a spiritual insight into embodied wisdom rarely happens quickly. More often, it unfolds through time and suffering. The magnitude of this transformation can be compared to the Grand Canyon—an immense beauty shaped not by a single event, but by eons of steady abrasion from flowing water. What seems slow and even destructive becomes, over time, a breathtaking landscape. So it is with the soul: time, abrasion, and hardship create depth in us until something enduring and beautiful appears.
Good Friday
There is a road of sorrow that runs through Jerusalem, through the heart of the world, and somehow, it also runs through each of us. However, this sorrow is unlike other sorrows; it is “good sorrow.”
Embodiment Part 5
What we practice long enough eventually takes up residence in the body. An idea may inspire us, but it is the embodiment that keeps it.
Embodiment Part 3
What if your body is not something you have, but someone you are in a relationship with?
Embodiment Part 2
There is a profound difference between knowing a truth and becoming it. One lives in the mind; the other lives in the body, the heart, and the soul. The spiritual life is not fulfilled by ideas we admire, but by truths we allow to take flesh within us.
Embodiment Part 1
Have you ever known, deep in your mind, who you wanted to be or how you longed to live, yet found yourself unable to actually become it? You understood it clearly. You could speak about it intelligently, defend it persuasively, and reflect on it thoughtfully. And yet, somehow, it never quite showed up in your life. It never completed the pilgrimage from your head into your body.
Soul Qualities Part 7
Our ego says to the soul, “Step aside, I have a plan.” The soul says to the ego, “Tap on my shoulder when you’re ready for the real plan.”
Soul Qualities Part 6
In the film “Never Look Away,” Kurt, a German teen, sits in deep thought in the boughs of a huge tree while looking at the blue sky. The wind shakes the tree gently as he becomes one with its branches and the wind. Suddenly he rouses, descends the tree and, in a flush of excitement, runs into his family’s farmhouse announcing at the top of his voice to each family member, “Now I understand everything, now I understand!” Each family says in their own way, “Great.” Then they resume their tasks. But after Kurt tells his father that he understands everything, his father asks, “What do you understand?” Kurt’s reply is, “That everything is one.”
Soul Qualities Part 4
Healing rarely happens in isolation. When one person’s strength falters, another’s presence often becomes that strength.
Soul Qualities Part 3
In moments of shock, whether from sudden danger, unexpected beauty, or life-altering news, many of us instinctively cry out, “Oh my God.”
Soul Qualities Part 2
The soul is not static. It moves through seasons, just as our lives do.
Soul Qualities Part 1
Some decisions do not feel like choices at all. They can be terrifying, yet sacred moments when whatever we do changes us forever.
The Parade Part 7
Before I ever knew what Mardi Gras meant, I knew what it felt like. And all of it was not good.
The Parade Part 6
In 1956, my first-grade class participated in the school-wide annual May Day celebration. Excitement mounted up until the special day. The sixth graders did the Maypole dances, and every other class had its own performance across the large playground. For many of us, this was our first experience with being “on stage.”
The Parade Part 5
An old American saying about people who save money only to lose far more in the process: “They would stop a parade to pick up a penny.”
The Parade Part 4
Not all parades celebrate victory or joy. Some parades expose the darkest capacities of the human soul.