Category: Mindfulness
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Everything Always Forever
NOTE: This piece was originally posted on my Substack where the majority of my writing lives right now. Beginnings, Endings, and Beginning Again Again Imagine if everything lasted forever. Not just some things. Everything. Imagine a reality where there was no death, no degradation, nothing that truly wore out or disappeared. Things might change form.…
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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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A Black Santa for White Christmas
Picture this. It is Christmas 1977. My mom and dad are arguing. I am 2. Somehow I know that I shouldn’t understand what is happening. But, yet I do. The final threads in the fabric of our family are snapping. My father is leaving. As he heads for the door, I feel an invisible tether…
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History is Not a Competition
We are often led to believe that everything in our society is a competition. But some things aren’t. And history is one of them.
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Conversation Catalyst or Conversation Coward?
Usually I write poems or long blogs to express my thoughts. This time I drew a picture. The point of the picture—if it’s not obvious—is that I think we are at a critical moment in the world when we can choose to be #ConversationCatalysts and foster a #CollaborativeCulture or we can be #ConversationCowards and devolve…
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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…
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Being With God
God is the ground of being, being-itself; who concerns us ultimately. Thus, God is our ultimate concern. — Paul Tillich I’ll be honest with you and say that on a weekly if not daily basis, I find myself wondering what good I am doing as a pastor. It’s not that I don’t appreciate what I do or the people with…
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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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Accidental Vision
If necessity is the mother of invention then accidents/mistakes are the really sweet step-mother. You never asked for her, but she can come in and cause something to emerge from you that you didn’t even know was present. To make my point, I will highlight just a few inventions that were created by mistake in…
The Roofless Church 