The Fear of Belonging
Why are we afraid of belonging? Because we lose control? Independence? Pride? I thought about these questions flying back home from a hug-filled conference in Lisbon, when islands of saneness […]
Author Archives: René Breuel
Freud’s God
God is a projection of the human father. As Sigmund Freud explains, God does not exist because he is just our conceptual longing for a heavenly father. He is an […]
Einstein’s Concert
Yehudi Menuhin started at the violin at a young age. Regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest violin performers, he was already playing with the San Francisco Symphony at the […]
God is not an idea
“The Word became flesh.” Ever heard that phrase? I wasn’t aware of how explosive it felt to the original readers of the Gospel of John until I did some digging […]
‘What if this were my family?’
There is nothing like love in action. This week CNN featured the story of Ryan Dueck‘s outreach to Syrian immigrants in Canada. What a beautiful display of Christian grace. Here’s […]
The Mosaic of Life
Some weeks ago, on my way to studies in Oxford, I landed at Gatwick Airport. The usually distracted routine–have my passport controlled, get my bag, go through customs–was startled by […]
Christianity isn’t for the faint-hearted
Do you want to get well? It seemed such an obvious question. Jesus once met a man who had been a paralytic for 38 years – and asked if he […]
A Zest for Life
This morning, when all was quiet and the sky still dark, I savored a few pages of a novel I’ve been reading, Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer-winning Gilead. In one of the […]
What Makes a Speaker Persuasive?
In his treatise on rhetoric, when Aristotle set out to express the factor that makes a public speaker most persuasive, he elected an element not many of us would choose. […]
A New Past
The scene that launches Victor Hugo’s classic, Les Misérables, tells the story of a man called Jean Valjean. Jean is arrested for stealing a loaf of bread and ends up […]
Wondering Fair 