On a walk in a Portland neighborhood with my sister and brother recently, a rather scary scene greeted us. It was a skeleton reaching out from the earth skywards, a grimace on its skull. Then I remembered it was the day before Halloween. (and yes, I am the kind of person who takes photos of… Read More The Power of the Past to Haunt Us
More, more, more. Bigger, better, best. I have blogged before about our national obsession in the United States with being the greatest, the biggest, the best of all that has ever been in history. (See Why does it matter if America is or isn’t the greatest country on earth?) Perhaps a desire to improve yourself… Read More A Lust for Numbers
Listening, real in depth listening, is never easy. But it can be easier with those that are like us, those that share our same preferences whether political, religious, hobbies, whatever. How about listening to those that are opposite to us? Those that have completely different backgrounds, journeys of life, tastes and ambitions. In a week… Read More Listening to our Opposites
Today one of my hero-servant leaders died at the age of 85. Eugene Peterson, a pastor, writer, spiritual leader, servant to all, was deeply loved across many parts of the Church and beyond. He was a person I had wanted so much to meet, but it is not to be on earth. Hopefully I can… Read More A Long and Faithful Servant-Walk
Humpty Dumpty’s great fall resulted in a whole lot of broken pieces. And as the English nursery rhyme goes that first appeared in the late nineteenth century, “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men, couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.” The image of broken Humpty Dumpty at the bottom of a wall has… Read More Humpty Dumpty and the broken pieces
The land of ‘in-between’. A painful place to be, not feeling fully part of one home or the other. What some have called ‘liminal’, or ‘threshold’, like the entry into somewhere new yet always just a little outside. Yet what a liberating place, enabling one to gain a freedom of lessening attachments. This is the… Read More The Land of ‘In-between’
An important spiritual practice or discipline for me is gratefulness. I am learning more in my life how giving thanks daily can help liberate me from comparison, worry and competitiveness. This is my first blog post in September. The main reason being that I was in a conference in Thailand of almost four thousand colleagues… Read More See these seashells and see them deeply
We need to be gathering resources that describe an alternate future. A future of hope different than what we know today. This past week carried more news of fires and hurricanes, sordid political tales from various countries, heinous murders and untimely deaths. And yes, there was good news too! But whatever our week was like,… Read More Mahatma Gandhi and Prophet Jeremiah on an Alternate Future
What does it mean to have a ‘lover’s quarrel’ with our nation? I love this description of times and season when for whatever reasons, and whatever our political leanings, we feel at odds with what is happening in our countries. And it can be true of any nation at any period of history. The idea… Read More Having a ‘lover’s quarrel’ with our nation
What if you could alter one event in history, whether in your personal life or your nation, leading to an entirely different outcome? Though the stuff of science fiction, it has also become the serious genre of alternative history. I must confess a certain love for books of this nature, whether it was If the South… Read More What if your history could be altered?
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Thoughts From a Resident Alien
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Encounters of Faith in Asia: Past, Present and Future 