Tag: The Roofless Church

  • Teaching What We Do Not Know: Awakening Abolitionists

    Teaching What We Do Not Know: Awakening Abolitionists

    “You know who you’re fighting. But do you really know what you’re fighting for? I mean really. Because when you do, there’s nothing anyone can take from you. When you know what you’re fighting for, it means you know who you really are and that you’re of infinite worth. With that knowledge, you live everyday…

  • …As Yourself : The Way of Love

    …As Yourself : The Way of Love

    He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” –…

  • Permission to Speak Freely: “Let’s Talk as Equals”

    Permission to Speak Freely: “Let’s Talk as Equals”

    Whether we intend them to or not, most of our conversations happen in frameworks that are upheld by socially accepted ranking systems. As I’ve witnessed it, when conversations happen in a context where someone believed to hold a “higher social ranking”, it is virtually impossible to have the conversations we need to have in order…

  • The Art of Wasting Potential

    The Art of Wasting Potential

    One of the most wicked destructive forces, psychologically speaking, is unused creative power … If someone has a creative gift and out of laziness, or for some other reason, doesn’t use it, the psychic energy turns to sheer poison. That’s why we often diagnose neuroses and psychotic diseases as not-lived higher possibilities. Marie-Louise von Franz…

  • Hear the (W)hole Story

    Hear the (W)hole Story

    Why is it that so many people see other perspectives and experiences as a threat? And why is it that we also tend to fill in holes and gaps in stories with whatever the path of least resistance offers us? As a person with a philosophical bent, I can admit that in most cases, I…

  • Save the Future With Your Present Conversations

    Save the Future With Your Present Conversations

    If you are part of a community of folks as small as your family or as large as a megachurch and you aren’t challenging yourselves in your conversations your communications are the equivalent of standing water. And elementary science tells us what happens to standing water. The conversations that we participate in are supposed to…

  • Love is God (Complete and Utter Joy)

    Love is God (Complete and Utter Joy)

    Sometimes I feel like I have to apologize to anyone burdened by the belief that God’s essence is anything other than Love. Even though I consciously know I’m not responsible for centuries of teachings to the contrary, when I see so many people burdened by the lie that God is just looking for ways to…

  • A Box as Big as the Universe

    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…

  • A Tale of Three Sheep🐑

    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…

  • Two Ideas One Mind: The Vices and Virtues of Cognitive Dissonance

    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…