Category: Contemplation
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No! You Do Not Totally Get It
Do you know what always annoys me? When people always talk in absolutes and never understand that there are things they may never understand. Did you see what I did there? I used absolutes to explain that I am always annoyed with people who speak in absolutes. Annoying, right? Absolutely Ludicrous So in the off…
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Message From a Frustrated Former Pastor (Concerning Pauline Interpretations and Other Stuff)
Since I don’t go to a particular church right now, I sometimes visit different churches or listen to messages from different folks online. Today I came across a guy online giving a message out of 1 Corinthians. Sadly he was using it to “put women in their place” and talk about “weak men” who support…
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A Tale of Three Sheep🐑
Person A: “You’re a sheep.Person B: “No. You’re a sheep.” Person C: “Why are you calling each other sheep?” Persons A and B: “Because the only people I listen to who told me to think for myself told me that anyone who disagrees with me is a sheep.” Person C: So let me get this…
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Two Ideas One Mind: The Vices and Virtues of Cognitive Dissonance
I sometimes wonder if hypocrisy comes from a person’s inability to harmonize the seemingly divergent awarenesses that arise as a result of them experiencing cognitive dissonance. Take for example someone like the segregationist Senator, Strom Thurmond who, despite adamantly advocating against civil rights for Black Americans and pushed for state’s rights to impose segregation, was…
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The Comfort Paradox
The first time I heard the saying, “Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted”, it was in seminary. I heard it from a cohort leader who said it in a way that led me to believe that she made it up. She never said she made it up. But, that was her response, when I…
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How 8 Thou Art (Reflections on My Enneagram#)
For about 6 years now, I have known that I am a type 8 on the Enneagram, what is often referred to as the Challenger/Protector. Even before I had a name and a number to describe some aspects of how I show up in the world, I was aware of many of the dimensions of…
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Stop In the Name of Love
If you had the power to end all of the violence in the world with a single action, would you do it? I imagine that most of us would say that of course we would. No one wants violence, right? It is just an unfortunate deterrent that we must use to prevent greater violence from…
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Transforming Purpose
Years ago a friend told me that he was sad because he didn’t know his life’s purpose. For some reason, I had never thought about that concept before. And so, because I didn’t know how to take what he was saying seriously, I insensitively reacted with laughter. This upset him, which only made me laugh…
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Communicating to Death (or some better title)
“Urkel is dead and I can’t breathe.” Those were the words Oprah spoke to the interviewer when they asked her about one of the most recent casualties of a senseless shooting. I couldn’t breathe either. How could Urkel be gone? He held the hopes of so many of us. He had achieved the dream and…
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There is No Competition
I might be going through a midlife crisis (MLC). A word that etymologically means, “the point at which change must come, for better or worse.” I remember that whenever I heard about MLCs growing up, I thought that whatever it was, it would never happen to me because the way MLCs are typically characterized, it…
The Roofless Church 