Religion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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