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Beyond Blue

I realize I’m throwing a lot at you guys this week. Every Monday I will post a prayer for the week. Every Friday for a few weeks I will interview a fellow mental-health blogger or professional. And for Wednesday … you get me, in the flesh, live (at least taped live, times 25 takes)! Here’s…

For those new Beyond Blue readers, here is a post I wrote back in January about why I love pilgrimages. If I don’t have time to fly or drive or take the train to a “God place,” I find one nearby, like the sea wall of the Naval Academy. I can’t count the number of…

Dear God, According to your friend Luke, you say this: Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the…

One of the new features I’m adding to Beyond Blue this week is the “Prayer of the Week.” A couple of reasons for this: 1) I’m trying to get more spiritual, and I’m using my fear deadlines to get there. Deadlines hold great power over me. If I force myself to write a prayer every…

Writing the prayer of the week based on Sunday’s readings has forced me to pay attention to the homily at Mass, because now the priest’s reflections can be material for my blog. I figure they may have picked up on themes that I missed. One of the priests at St. Mary’s in Annapolis, Fr. Andrew…

I must confess that the idea for my prior post, “The Saints’ Guide to Anxiety,” was not wholly original. It was somewhat borrowed from the title of one of my very favorite books, “The Saints’ Guide to Happiness” by my friend, Robert Ellsberg. It was difficult to find one excerpt to share, because there are…

There have been so many wonderful articles published in the last two weeks about Mother Teresa because of the release of a new volume of her writings that reveal decades of agony. The Washington Post piece, “The Torment of Teresa,” was one of the most poignant for me. To read the entire article by Michael…

Kevin Culligan, O.C.D. describes his collaborative approach to persons experiencing both depression and dark nights in the same chapter of Egan’s book, “Carmelite Prayer“: I follow a collaborative approach to assisting others with their spiritual journey. With most persons, this assistance is primarily spiritual and religious. Following the principles of the spiritual masters, I help…

According to Kevin Culligan, O.C.D, manic depression can mimic the behavior of someone growing in her spiritual life. Hey, that’s great news for me! The next time I get manic and tell an inappropriate joke to a colleague, I can say that I’m just getting closer to God, that’s all. Here’s what he has to…

How ironic that as I opened my devotional to the following excerpt by Mother Teresa on suffering just as I’m contemplating her dark night, and the difference between that kind of suffering and the symptoms of clinical depression. Here is an excerpt entitled “Christ’s Compassion for the Suffering” Suffering has to come because if you…
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