Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it- it can't survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy. When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes.
Ancient philosophers and spiritual teachers were explorers. They wanted us to be as well. They thought we should understand this physical world, but not get stuck here. For thousands of years we have shared their insights, over-analyzed and repeated ...
Life is not being sure what will come next or how it will come. We guess at everything we do. We take leap after leap in the dark and that's the joy of living and the beauty of faith. When we grow tired, when we sit still, that's when we begin to die...
I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back til you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going o...
The Christian life is not about pleasing God the finger-shaker and judge. It is not about believing now or being good now for the sake of heaven later. It is about entering a relationship in the present that begins to change everything now. Spiritual...
When standing in the middle of the marvelous mountains and deep forests, in the earthy smell of all beginnings and endings, I often find myself asking what I have if all my possessions were taken away. Without money, car, house; or power and fame, if...
I remember always being baffled by other children. I would be at a birthday party and watch the other kids giggling and making faces, and I would try to do that, too, but I wouldn't understand . I would site there with the tight elastic thread of the...
We all like to think the world ends when we do. The truth is our acquaintances, our friends, and our loved ones all live on, and through them, so do we. It's not about what you had, but what you gave. It's not about how you looked, but how you lived....
Joni discovered the best way to put the halter on her horse without being animal resisting and fleeing was to turn her back until he nuzzled up to her. At that point, she could slip the halter on. Just so, she surmises, sometimes God waits for us to ...
If the Gospel of Judas found in Codex Tchacos can be convincingly identified as being a Coptic translation of the original Greek Gospel of Judas that Bishop Ireneaus mentioned around A.D. 180 in his book, "Against Heresies," it will be an important s...
That's the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those very same people come into your study and tell you the most remarkable things. There's a lot under t...
Nobody today is nearly smart enough to make the sorts of weapons even the poorest nations had a million years ago. Yes, and they were being used all the time. During my lifetime, there wasn’t a day when, somewhere on the planet, there weren’t at ...
Like Molière’s M. Jourdain, who spoke prose all his life without knowing it, mathematicians have been reasoning for at least two millennia without being aware of all the principles underlying what they were doing. The real nature of the tools of t...
No matter how bad you feel, God never sees you as a reckless person. He may see you as a sinner who needs to be re-washed to get back to his old vision for His purpose, but He will never see you as a hopeless being who was created for nothing. Now if...
Don’t waste time worrying about work/life balance, or looking for your best self, sham “secrets” or any other snake oil being pushed by sloppy hippies who have never built a business, let alone a bankroll, or you will wake up 20 years from now ...
The failure of reorientation therapy is why the "ex-gay" ministry Exodus International shut down in 2013. It places gay Christians who adhere to the traditional biblical interpretation in an agonizing, irresolvable tension. In order to truly flee fro...
Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency—a chaos—, an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end life as we know it but for the fact that this ve...
What are you doing?” he gasped. He looked slightly ridiculous. It was not as if he was a defenseless damsel in distress. He could have stopped me, if he wanted to. But he didn’t want to. Besides, I’ve always considered this to be the most idiot...
Melville, by his own account, spent four months in the valley. He was well treated. He made friends with a girl called Fayaway, swam and boated with her, and except for his fear of being eaten was happy enough.
In the interview I was told that I’d be replacing Robert, who was a robot. The company thought they could save some money and automate the front desk position, because they didn’t have to pay Robert, there was no fear of legal action being brough...
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pi...
