We’ve all excused ourselves in various ways for not doing what we should. Someone might say something like this, “I would pray or worship God more, but I’m just too busy.” “I would forgive that person, but you don’t know how mean they were to me.” “I would help more people, but they would probably just use what I give them to buy alcohol and drugs.” “I would quit my bad habits, but I don’t think it would last.” “I would tell others about Jesus and what He has done for me, but I’m too shy.”…

In my last written post, I shared my experience of being in a room with a group of people who continue to fight unjust systems and empower those within them to claim their voices. I acknowledged that now, as always, there are reasons to despair—and that those reasons do not create the sum total of our reality. We have choices about where we focus our attention. We have options when it comes to how we react to what we see….

Yesterday, June 9, was the feast day of St. Columba, Abbot of Iona. St. Patrick was said to have prophesied Columba’s birth:

He will be a saint and will be devout,
He will be an abbot, the king of royal graces,
He will be lasting and for ever good;
The eternal kingdom be mine by his protection.

That’s a lot of pressure! But Columba lived up to it, becoming a monk in his native Ireland, and then a missionary and a priest. He founded several monasteries in Ireland, and then headed to Northern Britain to evangelize further. Legend has it that his tiny boat first washed ashore on the Isle of Iona, on the coast of Scotland….