In the book Prayer: 40 Days of Practice, I take a swing at unpacking the word “spiritual;” not an effort to redefine the word for all users, but an effort to expand its application to meet my own experience and expectation. I do so by way of a kind of allegory; one in which a … Read More
A few weeks ago, I was in a contraption with a few folks my age and older who were voicing concerns about all the “information” kids get online. During that conversation, statistics were thrown around about how much data we’re subject to. Apparently, every person creates something like 1.7 MB of data every second, which amounted … Read More
It’s likely you’ve heard something like “You’re being emotional.” Or “let’s not bring emotions into this.” And it’s likely that, when you heard it, it was said in the context of the conversation is about something very, very serious; something serious enough that, were we to “get emotional” or “bring emotions into it” we would … Read More
I’ve come to pretty fundamentally believe that some things cannot (and should not) be discussed outside of personal experience. That might sound odd coming from someone with a relatively traditional education in western philosophy. But… here I am. One of the keenest examples of that is gun violence. The way I see it: despite the … Read More
Sometimes, there aren’t sufficient words for a moment or a season or a feeling. The other side to that coin is that sometimes the wild, the unexpected, or inexplicable … serve the blessed purpose of breaking the words we are used to using and inviting us to make something new from their pieces. This is … Read More
I have mentioned Caroline McIntyre‘s book “caring for words in a culture of lies“ many times over the course of this podcast’s five years. It was, upon first read, a formative and grounding resource; it continues to be. In part because I have historically had a tendency to talk too much, putting too many words … Read More
When Rachel Held Evans died, on May 4 of 2019, she left a significant m emotional and cultural void; one that was felt by her followers and readers but also one that was felt differently by those she was working alongside. See, Rachel was part of a whole tribe of persons working to establish and … Read More
The way I hear it used, the word “celebrity” almost always comes with a tinge of disdain. In fact, I was recently interviewing a band about their relatively wild public success and used the word “celebrity” to ask a question about how it felt to have the kind of influence they’d garnered. Boy oh boy … Read More
I actually never watched the Batchelor. And that’s not a thing I say with pride or any sense of superiority. I honestly just don’t watch a lot of TV and haven’t since I was about 12, when shows like “The A-Team” and “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” took up space on the probably 20 networks … Read More
Stephen Pressfield calls it “Resistance.” A number of religious traditions call it “sin.” But regardless of the name folks apply to it, it seems to me that we generally share, cross-culturally and throughout history, a sense and a lament that things don’t work out perfectly; that things fall apart and that plans don’t always go … Read More
