Category: Awareness

  • So Help Me Dog

    So Help Me Dog

    A little more than two weeks ago, our family dog of 15 years, Journey, whose painting is on the above video, died. Since that time, our family has shed our fair share of tears. Yes, some of them have been tears of sadness. But most of them have been tears of joy that we were…

  • Transforming Our Roadblocks to Serenity

    Transforming Our Roadblocks to Serenity

    Serenity? What is it and why is it so hard to achieve? And once we find it, how do we hold on to it? In our time together, Pedro Silva will engage participants in a reflection on the idea of serenity and why it is a worthy focus in our journeys of faith. Leaning on…

  • Strong Too Long

    Strong Too Long

    …Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but God said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you,…

  • Going With the Flow:The Way of the Mind

    Going With the Flow:The Way of the Mind

    The first thing to know about the mind is that it is not a container that holds your thoughts like some kind of cerebral cookie jar. It is more like a stream upon which thoughts might float and dissolve into. You are not your thoughts. Nor are you simply your mind. The essential and incorruptible…

  • Teaching What We Do Not Know: Awakening Abolitionists

    Teaching What We Do Not Know: Awakening Abolitionists

    “You know who you’re fighting. But do you really know what you’re fighting for? I mean really. Because when you do, there’s nothing anyone can take from you. When you know what you’re fighting for, it means you know who you really are and that you’re of infinite worth. With that knowledge, you live everyday…

  • …As Yourself : The Way of Love

    …As Yourself : The Way of Love

    He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” –…

  • You Don’t Owe Jack, But Love!

    You Don’t Owe Jack, But Love!

    Love for One Another Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor…

  • Save the Future With Your Present Conversations

    Save the Future With Your Present Conversations

    If you are part of a community of folks as small as your family or as large as a megachurch and you aren’t challenging yourselves in your conversations your communications are the equivalent of standing water. And elementary science tells us what happens to standing water. The conversations that we participate in are supposed to…

  • We Will All Be Changed

    We Will All Be Changed

    Who would we be if we knew who we were becoming? Weird question huh? Out of the depths of confusion about where we are going as a nation and a planet, I prayed and meditated about why we are so seemingly divided. As I reflected on the scripture passage below, I remembered how the fear…

  • The Selfish Twins and a Mother’s Will – A Parable

    The Selfish Twins and a Mother’s Will – A Parable

    Twin brothers start talking out their issues at a family gathering just ahead of a reading of the will of their wise mother. But no sooner had they started talking then Brother A starts going off. Brother B keeps smiling and shaking his head possibly thinking, “Why did I get myself into this?” Still brother…