Tag: Relationships
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Become a We: The Quickest Path to Healing Relational Wounds
“Become a ‘We’ as fast as you can.” Of all the advice that my father gave me in the 32 years that he was physically in my life, this was the most important. When he was dying from Multiple Myeloma, something awakened in him that transformed the way he saw reality. All of the time…
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Self Betrayal Does Not Lead to Love
Generally speaking, I am not nice. But, I am kind. Nice is performative and at its core is a subtle form of manipulation. You present yourself in a certain way in order to manage another person’s perception of you, whether its to convince them that you’re a better person than you actually are for your…
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Stepping into the Mystery
Are you willing to step into the Mystery? “I don’t know” is a viable answer to any question if “not knowing” is the truth. Two years ago, when I listened to the “Voice” that called me into pastoral ministry saying that it was time to leave the pulpit and the building and go out into…
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I Work For Your Organization. And You Can’t Stop Me.
In Mandarin there is a phrase that goes, 水涨船高 (shuǐzhǎngchuángāo)–literally water rise boat high–which basically comes down to the often expressed wisdom that we hear in American economics, “a rising tide lifts all boats”. A lot of people attribute the saying to John F. Kennedy. But it turns out he got it from his speechwriter,…
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Living Loveward Ch. 2 – Certainty Kills Relationships
Most of us imagine that if we just had certainty, all of our relationships would run more smoothly. Like most love myths, it’s probably not true. In this video, I challenge hearers to ask ourselves if we really want what we say we want from our relationships.
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“I” Does Not Exist – The Power and Peril of Family Systems (Boulder, CO)
When One Suffers, We All Suffer I have been trying to do soul surgery on myself ever since learning about the shooting at the King Soopers in Boulder, CO where I have shopped countless times and sometimes drop my daughter off for her gymnastics carpool. I am doing this because in my heart of hearts,…
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A Box as Big as the Universe
My uncle, Vernon Kitabu Turner, can’t be put in a box. And it is time that I thank God for him. He just loves God and has ceaselessly sought to understand the Spirit that he has witnessed as active his entire life by any means necessary. When I was younger, people told me that I…
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Ending Racism: How to Change the World in One Generation
The other morning I was feeling the weight of trying to articulate possibilities in the face of polarities. I prayed for some guidance on how to reimagine some of the conversations we’re having on race. Next thing you know, I get this email from my new friend Justin Michael Williams inviting me to preview an…
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Is Common English An Inherently Biased/Oppressive/Racist Language?
Can a language be biased/oppressive/racist? I know that right off the bat some people will take issue with the question this title suggests. They’ll say, “No. A language can’t be inherently racist or anything else other than a method of communication. It is neutral. Words don’t hurt people. People hurt people.” And to some degree,…
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Do I Deserve To Be Happy?
Recently a friend told me that I deserve to be happy? Hearing those words took me back to one of the darkest times in my life–a season I touch on in the links on my last post, DMX and the Ballad of the Brokenhearted. Prior to the emotional crash I chronicle in that and other…
The Roofless Church 