Photo by Paolo Bendandi on Unsplash Think about your grandparents. What images enter your mind? What feelings come over you? I imagine those feelings might run the gamut of emotions. My PapPap (Dad’s father) died when I was 3, but my earliest memory of any kind was fishing with him on the bank of the...Read More

I spend a good part of my time these days helping people wrestle with questions related to job, career, purpose and calling. Are they interchangeable? Are they the same thing? Can you be satisfied in a job that doesn’t feel like a calling? If you sense you have a purpose in this world, do you...Read More

Photo by nikko macaspac on Unsplash One of my most cherished times of the day is in the early hours, just after waking up. I look forward to my boring, but comfortably same, breakfast of yogurt, granola and berries and maybe a homemade bran muffin (the best ever, with dried cherries). I then take some...Read More

If you and I were to sit down for a cup of coffee, you’d probably not notice anything out of the ordinary about me. I’d come across as stable and fairly put together. And, largely, I am. Outwardly I’m settled, albeit subdued. But apparently my body has been keeping score, according to Dr. Bessel Van...Read More

You know how Google and Amazon and Facebook and the whole internet knows what to send you? How you watch one YouTube thing about some dude cutting down a tree, and for months your feeds are overrun with videos of lumberjacks and sawmills? (This is happening to me in real time.) Well, right now it...Read More

Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering ‘it will be happier’…Alfred Tennyson I’m straining to hear that whisper. It’s faint, but I think I hear it. Hope is never a luxury. It is essential. I shudder when I think that relief may be deferred much further into the new year. That...Read More

Dancing through life Skimming the surface Gliding where turf is smooth Life’s more painless For the brainless Why think too hard? When it’s so soothing I chuckle every time I hear those lyrics in the song Dancing Through Life from the hit Broadway show Wicked. It’s sung by a rather glib and cocky young man...Read More

I’m about to return to church. I retired from pastoral work on May 31st of this year, 2020, after a 42-year ministry career. The agreed upon plan was for me to distance myself from our church for 6 months to allow time for the new senior pastor and the church to acclimate without me hanging...Read More

I’m not talking about social media influencers, people who have mastered the art of Tik Tok or Instagram or any of the other platforms to get us to buy or think differently. No, I’m talking about that man or woman who, by their presence, exerts an almost mystical effect on others. They inspire movement. They...Read More

I had a conversation with some folks recently in which we were lamenting the damage that has been done to some of our relationships due to political hostility, differences of opinion in COVID response and reactions to the social unrest over systemic racism…among others. We’ve lost trust in one another. And many of us have...Read More