The first lines of John’s gospel proclaim that “in the beginning was the Word,” and that “all things came into being through the Word.”

We can hear these words literally as an historical assertion claiming that at some distant point in ancient times – the initiation of time – the Word (whatever that might mean) came into being as a kind of medium through which all else that has come to be was created. My sense is that misses the poetic thrust of this mystical writer. Rather, I understand John to have experienced that not only in the beginning of each and every experience we have, but in the middle and culmination as well, there is this mystery he identifies as “the Word.”

One of the most characteristic features of Rabbi Jesus’ teaching is his experience of the reign of God as present here and now. This manifestation of God’s reign is not a reality to be feared, but as we hear in the synoptic gospels, is to be received as “good news.” But why? What are some of the qualities of the reign of God that tell of its goodness in our lives? And what does it even mean to speak of “God’s reign” in the 21st century within a culture in which kingdoms and monarchs do not exist, and resonate within our imagination and lives as antiquated and oppressive?

Throughout his poignant and moving book, “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts”, the Vancouver physician, Gabor Maté, offers heartrending accounts of the existential devastation wrought on the fabric of our personal being by the effects of addiction. One particularly graphic description strikes at the core of the human struggle.