A Personal Ghetto
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
A Short Fall
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
Centurion Moment
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
Betwixt and Between
Think of this election as the extension of a collective rite of passage into which we were plunged with the pandemic. A rite of passage is a three-part experience that grows us from one stage of human development to another. Being
Power of Powerlessness
We don’t have real rites of passage in our culture anymore. At least not conscious rituals that take us through the three essential stages of separation, transition, and reincorporation. In true rites of passage, we are taken from the familiar world
Healing Happiness
Woman tells me her daughter just left to go back to college after the summer home. How’s she doing with that? Sad, but ok. Truthfully, she’d gotten used to the freedom of an empty nest. Missed that freedom with her
Happiness Is
Moving days are always stressful, but our last move was off the hook. My wife sick, cleaning and packing until 1:30A, then up again at 6A to pouring rain that lasted all day. Delays at the new house meant they
Graduating Certainty
When Christians fight, you can bet it’s going to be over the book. No matter the issue at hand, it will always come back to the book, or more specifically, interpretation of the book, which is all we really have. No
Jesus’ Rudiments
A friend sent me a link to a podcast interview that rambled, but was mostly concerned with end times prophecy. Confused and concerned, he wanted to know what I thought. In one of their tangents, the interviewee flatly stated: God
Unreasonable Meaning
I’ve said that Jesus’ teaching is not meant to give data, but point to an experience that changes everything. But what is the everything that changes? If we say our very understanding of life—how things are or should be—next morning,