Tag Archives: CS Lewis

Ep14 Finding Lost Faith

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:31 — 25.2MB)

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Father Len explains what causes a loss of faith and gives listener Jennifer some ideas for finding her lost faith.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Father Len explains the difference between faith and belief.
  • Faith is like a muscle. If you don’t use it, it will atrophy and you’ll lose it.
  • Faith is like a seed. It’s a gift from God. We must prepare the soil in which it grows. The soil is our hearts. The best means for preparing the soil is prayer and reflection.
  • Faith is like water. It needs a path to flow. Prayer and reflection dig the “trench” that allows faith to flow.
  • Prayer and reflection are habits that give birth to faith.
  • Father Len introduces one of his favorite tools for feeding and deepening his faith, “The Daily Examen” created by St. Ignatius.
  • The daily practice of gratitude will make you a happier person and deepen your faith.
  • “Feeling Good: the New Mood Therapy” by David D Burns M.D.
  • Life is a matter of negotiating problems.
  • Troubles in life do not cause faith to evaporate. Quite the opposite. We can find the presence of Christ in all of our problems.
  • “God whispers to us in our good times, but shouts to us in our pain.” – CS Lewis

Ep11 Why do we need religion?

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:20 — 17.7MB)

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Father Len explains how religion helps us recognize who we are meant to be and helps us become our best selves.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Religion is to spirituality what tea is to water. Religion adds flavor and extracts the essence of spirituality.
  • Practicing religion makes people happier, healthier, and live longer. It reduces depression, lowers blood pressure, crime, and the divorce rate.
  • “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community” by Robert Putnam
  • Religion brings people together and helps them recognize who they’re meant to be.
  • We all need a community that cares about values and way of life to bring out our full and best selves. Working together with a common purpose, we begin to share each other’s story and become more concerned about other people’s stories than our own.
  • Human beings have always searched for the divine.
  • The common translation of the word shalom is peace, but it really means unity. This unity has four parts. Unity between us and God. Unity between each other. Unity within ourselves. Unity with creation. When you have all four, you have shalom and a great analogy for religion.
  • “Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions” by Johann Hari
  • We all need connection with a goal and purpose in life that is greater than us.
  • Father Len reveals what he believes is missing in our Facebook “connections” and why he believes the “Facebook life” is likely contributing to rampant depression and the rise in suicide, cynicism, and mocking in our society.
  • Research has shown that worship produces a Spike in the love hormone oxytocin that helps bind us together.
  • Worship helps us discover our personal worth, other people’s worth, and the worth of God.
  • Father Len shares a little fun “family trash” to illustrate the relationships, values, and commitments that flow from religion and help us improve ourselves and our lives.
  • Religion is about a sacrifice and an offering of that part of us that thinks only of ourselves in hopes that part of us will eventually die.

Ep8 How do we know God is real?

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:28 — 15.1MB)

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Father Len reveals that evidence of God is always present in us and around us, in all aspects of our lives. He explains why some of us recognize and accept this evidence and others don’t.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom 

  • What evidence are you looking for? What evidence are you willing to accept?
  • CS Lewis was head of the atheists in England until a walk through nature made him begin to realize he did believe in God. He then came to recognize lots of other evidence of God in his life that he hadn’t permitted to affect him.
  • People see only what they want to see. They don’t see the world as it is. They see the world as they are.
  • All of life is evidence of God. There’s something quantitatively different about life itself versus inanimate life.
  • Love, joy, pain, suffering, it’s all evidence of God.
  • Father Len uses a monopoly game analogy to explain the difficulty people have recognizing and accepting evidence of the presence of God.
  • “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief” by Francis S Collins
  • Dorothy Day was a confirmed atheist until she held her baby daughter for the first time and instantaneously felt an overpowering sense of love and joy.