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Week 8: losing to find
If (or when) we begin to diverge from what we were so stringently taught to believe, feelings of fear and guilt may follow. Our context, upbringing, circumstances, and environment are so powerful, and have so much control over our thinking and beliefs of what is good and bad, right and wrong, true and untrue. If Continue reading
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Week 7: known over knowing
“In a world where people believe they are not hungry, we must not offer food but rather an aroma that helps them desire the food that we cannot provide…[we] must endeavor to be a question rather than an answer and an aroma rather than food.” Peter Rollins When I ask for answers, give me more Continue reading
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Week 6: seeing (part 2)
Almost two years ago, I was in Arequipa, Peru. I connected with a couple who help run a home for young Peruvians with mental and physical handicaps, most of them severe. I remember my first afternoon visiting the orphanage. Most of the individuals have severe mental handicaps. Some of them can communicate a little; many Continue reading
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Week 5: seeing
Years ago, during a night in the city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, I had an ever so small encounter that, for whatever unknown reason, has left a lasting emotional impact. I meandered through a crowded night bazaar with sidewalk shops and stands, enjoying the evening and people watching (as I always did without Continue reading
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Week 4: forgetful
“I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often.” What have I forgotten, my father? Will I leave you, like so many others? Or will I stay with the seemingly few? I don’t want to be Continue reading
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Week 3: these three men
Sitting there with those two men (“K” and “J” we’ll call them), I felt something I haven’t felt in a long time. A little spark, a little hunger, a little thirst, the challenge of not having the answers to difficult questions; men of various backgrounds and different experiences and opinions, listening to one another without Continue reading
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Week 2: living questions
I recently finished my first book by Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (if you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and read it). There’s a specific conversation that occurs between Jayber and one of his professors at the college he’s attending as a “pre-ministerial student.” He wants to leave; he no longer wants to be a Continue reading
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Week 1: creative tension
I don’t necessarily like new year’s resolutions; goals sound a little better. Are you setting any goals for yourself this year? I’m setting at least one. One recent night while trying to fall asleep, it came to me: Write one reflection every week for a year. If you don’t start right now, you never will. Continue reading
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“On Creating” – Part 2: worth doing (badly)
by Anthony Martin “To serve a work of art, great or small, is to die, to die to self.” – Madeleine L’Engle On a hill overlooking a wide meadow next door to the house where I grew up is an oak tree with a few rotting boards nailed into its trunk. These misaligned memorials Continue reading
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“On Creating” – Part 1: some thing
by Nielsen Greiner “We must work every day, whether we feel like it or not, otherwise when it comes time to get out of the way and listen to the work, we will not be able to heed it.” – Madeleine L’Engle Procrastination. Excuses. Apathy. Passivity. Lack of time. No inspiration. These are Continue reading
surely we do not mean only.”
a kingdom built of seeds 