Every day, I am reminded… 1. Dismissing is easier than listening. 2. Judging is easier than seeking to understand. 3. Concluding is easier than patiently remaining open. 4. Stereotyping is easier than seeing. 5. Profiling is easier than curiously engaging. 6. Other...
From his hospital bed this morning (one-day stay for a minor procedure), Dad asked me to please help him with flowers and a cake for Mom’s birthday. She is turning 75 this weekend. Once at the store, I had to send multiple pictures of options to him before he was...
Human beings are not born with self-control. We have to learn what to do with the mad that we feel. Learning to control ourselves is a long, hard process. It happens little by little. In fact, it is something we work on all through our lives.
The truth hurts. Truth cuts like a knife. But not all cuts are harmful. Not all piercing is meant to be cruel. Instead, pain is often part of the path of healing–the pain of admitting one’s own wrongs or confronting the wrongs done to oneself. It is through this...
Spiritual transformation always includes a usually disconcerting reorientation. Change happens, but transformation is always a process of letting go, living in the confusing, shadowy space for a while, and eventually being spit up on a new and unexpected shore. You...
Martin Luther went through a process of religious deconstruction. The system he was deeply committed to began falling apart for him FROM THE INSIDE, and so he sought a better way--and not without criticism from those committed to defending the system. Deconstruction...
Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.
Grief can only be processed by grieving, a painful exercise that is both cathartic and therapeutic. But grieving can also be deeply spiritual as it unveils the shallowness of religious cliches and reveals a deeper core faith that gives us permission to lament,...
This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness: not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is continuing. This...
The more you grow into love, into the message of Jesus--to say it in such traditional, defenseless terms--the more vulnerable you make yourself. You simply become more open to attack when you have become conspicuous or when "that of God" lights up in you. When you...