Tag: Awareness

  • Pretending to Be You

    Pretending to Be You

    There is this common idea in the world of appearances that is described as “faking it until you make it”. When I first heard that saying, it was disturbing to me. The way I interpreted it was that people should pretend to be someone others think they should be. This was something people advise people…

  • Power Beyond Measure Part 4

    Power Beyond Measure Part 4

    We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. — Marianne Williamson One day my dad called me out of nowhere and invited me to visit him in Mississippi. He said he wanted to talk to me and that it had…

  • Being With God

    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…

  • Mastering Your Greatest Weakness

    Mastering Your Greatest Weakness

    “Your greatest weakness is your strength overdone.” — Some Wise Person Whose Name I can’t remember. In a recent post, I reflected a little on being an 8 on the Enneagram. In it I mentioned briefly about 8s despising weakness in themselves and others. What I didn’t get into was examples of that in my…

  • How 8 Thou Art (Reflections on My Enneagram#)

    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…

  • Somewhere I Belong

    Somewhere I Belong

    You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great… — Maya Angelou “You don’t belong here.” For the first 5 or so minutes that this woman was talking to me, I was hoping that my short responses to her…

  • Powerful Beyond Measure Part 2

    Powerful Beyond Measure Part 2

    “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” – Marianne Williamson When I first decided to write about the full Marianne Williamson quote from which the above portion derives, I thought that it would be relatively easy. But it didn’t take long for me…

  • There is No Competition

    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…

  • On Blacking In America – v. To offend others by existing

    The message written below is a response I wrote to someone with whom I was engaged in a dialogue after we both read the same blog post where pastor, John Pavlovitz, made distinctions between white Christians who say they were “embarrassed” by President Obama, those who simply disagreed with him, and those who basically are conscious…

  • Those Who Lose Their Lives…

    Those Who Lose Their Lives…

    Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me…