In the sixteenth century there was a monk by the name of Dorotheos of Gaza who used a simple diagram to illustrate the connection between loving God and loving people. He asked his followers to imagine life as a circle, with God as a point in the center. Imagine now that the outside of the circle is the world, and the lives of human beings are lines drawn from the outside of the circle to the point in the center. Get the picture? Now consider this: as you follow a single line from the outside toward God, all the [READ MORE]

Many years ago, a man was climbing the face of El Capitan, a rather famous rock formation out west. The mountain is something like one mile high, and it runs straight up like an arrow. Well, this climber was almost to the summit when his hand slipped. The rock face began to crumble, and he began to fall, slipping down the face of El Capitan. But at the last second, the climber’s grasping hand found a little green branch growing out of the rock. He clutched it as hard as he could, and it held. Dangling there, almost one [READ MORE]