SINGLENESS is a topic that usually does not get addressed well, if at all. There was a time when particularly within the catholic church the focus was on singleness as the way to have reached it - nuns and monks and the gift of celibacy were the way to go and being single meant you were seen as more spiritual and closer to God and there were bible passages that could be used to 'back [...]
i said to my beautiful wife Valerie the other day something along the lines of 'what do people write statuses [stati?] about on Facebook if they are not entering into a relationship or having a baby? [or these days in americaland making some kind of staunchly pro this party or anti that one political statement] as it just seemed like the majority of statuses [stati?] i was reading were about one of those... two things [...]
i said to my beautiful wife Valerie the other day something along the lines of 'what do people write statuses [stati?] about on Facebook if they are not entering into a relationship or having a baby? [or these days in americaland making some kind of staunchly pro this party or anti that one political statement] as it just seemed like the majority of statuses [stati?] i was reading were about one of those... and two [...]
my friend and bossman, Darin, shared some stuff on Saturday's Simple Way Conversations day on the theme of stewarding your treasures [your money and things] well in the world we live in... one really interesting thing he said which made me think was when he asked about the definition of poverty and said that often poverty has been defined as THE LACK OF STUFF? that's true, right? i'm sure most of us would agree... but [...]
well if you know me a little bit, you know i am not a big fan of resolutions [nice-sounding generally-empty promises you make to yourself and keep for a week at the beginning of each year] but i did write a piece on new year's evolutions once with the idea of putting things into play that will actually change you or your circumstances or community... and being mid-way through the year is a great time [...]
This is a powerful testimony from my friend Jackie who was adopted: It was never a secret that I was adopted. Both my brother and I were told before we even fully knew what it meant – and so was never a big deal. But that’s where it ended. We were never told any more than that – and so growing up I had no knowledge of my birth parents and had no wish to [...]
a little while ago [well, a month it seems] i started a series called Taboo Topics where i wanted to look at some serious issues in life that deeply affect people but that rarely get spoken about. The first one, losing a baby, was something that had been on my heart for a long, long time because of knowing some friends who had been through it and having a glimpse of how devastating it must [...]
it has been in the context of 'being wronged' that i have noticed it. and also brought up by an email i received the other day asking how we can be okay with the fact that God ordered genocide in the old testament [a really important question which i have grown up not asking - killing of many in the old testament was always seen as okay because it was 'the goodies killing the baddies' [...]
we all know the much told story of the prodigal son, right? in fact, i even wrote a poem about it once, imagining the prodigal son had gone prodigal again [as one does] which you can take a look at here, but if you in fact don't know the story, you can look it up in Luke 15.11-32. and we all focus on the bad son and how we relate and the clever preachers tell [...]
so i have been going to gym, with my good friend from across the street, Coe aka Cobra [aka creator of the most powerful beast in the world - the Snuck - it's a snake, but it looks like a duck so you think it's all cute and innocent and go to stroke it, but watch out, it's a SNAKE!!!] [disclaimer: Coe has not actually created any Snucks as of yet so back of PETA, [...]