“Religion is lived by people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is lived by people who have been through hell.”   Over the years some of the most sensitive and compassionate people I have met have been recovering addicts and some of the most spiritually enlightened people I know,...

While many of you studied the story of David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17) in Sunday school, I did not really appreciate this story until I was in my early thirties and watched the Veggie Tales version called “Dave and the Giant Pickle.” So here is a quick refresher: Israel was at war...

photo © 2007 Wiros | more info (via: Wylio)My favorite way to spend a Friday night is to camp on the couch, set Pandora loose with one of my favorite songs and catch up with friends on Facebook and Twitter.  God always uses that background music to draw my attention to ordinary moments and...

Every time I teach Unity Works and people hear Charles’s story of how God set him free of addiction through an AA based recovery program, someone asks a question similar to this one from a participant a while back, “”I still have questions in my mind about the “God of my...

What is your drug of choice?  comfort, security, competition, praise, staying busy, controlling people, being in shallow relationships, having too much or too little money, worrying, seeing ourselves as superior or inferior to others. The above list of addictions came from an intriguing post...

In one of our recent discussions about the role of spirituality in The Healing Place recovery program, one of our Unity Works participants asked the following question, “I still have questions in my mind about the “God of my understanding”.  Does AA proclaim the Gospel or...

In the fall of 2008, Embrace Richmond received an AmeriCorps grant which we have used to hire a number of homeless and formerly homeless men and women.  Many of these individuals are graduates from The Healing Place a 198 bed residential recovery program based on the 12 steps of Alcoholics...