Author: Dave Brisbin

The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Eliot’s iconic line reminds that time is not a line, but a circle. Beginning and end one and the same.

What do you think of as a miracle? Seas parting, walking on water, healings? Dictionaries tell us miracles are events not explainable by natural or scientific laws. But what if an event is not explainable to or by you personally? Or

I’ve tried to make amends to people I’ve hurt in the past. Sometimes I felt reconnected. Sometimes my apology was flatly refused. Sometimes the words of forgiveness were spoken, but everyone knew nothing further was exchanged. In all of them, there

When we hear the Hebrew word shalom, we think of peace, as in the absence of conflict. And when we hear the word forgiveness, we think of pardoning or excusing, even condoning a person’s harmful action. But shalom—selama in Aramaic—means

Ever try to give someone a compliment who couldn’t accept it? I like your shirt. Oh this? I got it on the clearance rack. Good job! I could have done better, just got lucky. Or next level: It wasn’t me; it was the

When I went skydiving for the first and only time, I didn’t want a tandem jump—strapped to a jumpmaster—so that meant a full eight hours of training, and that the decision to jump was all mine. Fear grew all day

Longtime friend sent a text just long enough to tell me that his wife had died and could we set up a time to talk. I was shocked—knew she was fighting cancer, but no idea so advanced. On the phone,

If the first three Steps of AA are a serial surrender of the illusion that we can manage our lives isolated from the greater power of community and God, then Steps 4-7 are a serial healing of the damage those

Made a decision to turn our lives and will over to God, a power greater than ourselves…Step Three of AA…sort of a let go and let God. Sounds so easy, but it’s only as easy as our grip on whatever

Looking at the 12 Steps of AA as a rite of passage: separation from the now too-small world we knew, to a disorienting transition, to reincorporation—a changed person returning to community. It’s the shape of every human life, but the