Category: Meaning
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Bias By Us: How Our Unconscious Programs Us to Harm the Other
Black, White, or Other? “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” Being Black and growing up in the South—between Virginia and Mississippi—with a name like Pedro Senhorinha Ramos Montero Silva brought in many unwelcomed experiences in my life. One of which was the othering…
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Do the INR (Individual Narrative Responsibility) Work
How often do you reflect on how much the stories you tell yourself impact your life? Personally, I think about it everyday. Because since I was a child, I have always been keenly aware of narrative dynamics. Consciously or unconsciously we all perceive ourselves as characters in a narrative. And how we locate ourselves in…
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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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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…
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Developing A Sense of True Identity
If the nations of this world all die eventually, I imagine the official cause of death would be from complications due to the identity struggles of their citizenry. I get no pleasure out of making that statement, but I cannot ignore that, as far as I can tell, the divided world seems to be in…
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Prepackaged Moods on Life’s Meaning
Recently I did a life review while floating in the ocean on a beach in Waikiki. I always do this, because as I am floating, the thought usually crosses my mind, “What if a shark just comes out of nowhere and eats me whole right now? What will my life have been about?” That might…
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Everybody Hates Christians
Don’t let the title of this post fool you. If you’re thrown off by this image and the title then chances are you have never heard of the show from the early 2000s based on the life of comedian Chris Rock as a teenager. The show was entitled “Everybody Hates Chris” and chronicled the awkward…
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If There Was No Such Thing As Language…
Recently I’ve made the error of reading comments from people at the bottom of some the articles about the recent shootings, racism in America, so called white privilege, and the Black Lives Matters movement. For years I stopped reading the comments because after doing so I typically walk away with a sense of foreboding. I…
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The Privilege of Fearing God
Fear and God. For a long time those two words seemed not to go together for me. After all, in the book of 1 John we are told “God is Love” and despite how we tend to think of hate as love’s opposite, anyone who has ever loved knows that is inaccurate. Fear is actually…
The Roofless Church 