by Guy Sayles | Jan 26, 2018 |
Character is the primary arena of change. We can’t change the DNA we inherited, the circumstances into which we were born, or the families which shaped and misshaped us, or the wounding events we’ve undergone. Some things about our bodies, temperaments, and minds are...
by Guy Sayles | Jan 21, 2018 |
(This is longer than my usual posts; if I had time, I would make it shorter!)Change is possible, but not if we try to do it on our own.In an earlier post, I identified some of the factors which combine to make change more likely:emotional-spiritual energy from beyond...
by Guy Sayles | Jan 9, 2018 |
When Anita and I were in seminary, we served a small and loving congregation in southern Indiana. One of our next-door neighbors, a generous man in his late fifties and a faithful member of the church, was crustily cynical about the possibility of change. At...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 23, 2017 |
Even though we lose track of in the glitter and sweetness of our celebrations, Christmas is intensely and insistently political. It’s about who’s in charge.Jesus was born in an occupied land and under the shadow of Rome’s Emperor. It was his decree that Mary and...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 19, 2017 |
I’m allergic to sentimentality.I break-out in heart-hives when I brush up against counted-cross stitch samplers of motivational quotes, with greeting cards that feature babies, puppies, kittens, and balloons, and with rhyming love poems printed on a pastel background...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 4, 2017 |
This post is the last of three in which I respond to themes in Paul Kalanithi’s beautiful book, When Breath Becomes Air. Kalanithi’s said: “Severe illness wasn’t life altering; it was life-shattering” (120). I agree.To observers who don’t have (because no...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 2, 2017 |
Here is the second of three posts in which I respond, out of my own experience with serious illness, to a few themes in Paul Kalanithi’s beautiful book, When Breath Becomes Air. I ended the first with this resolve: The only way to live is to live.In tension with that...
by Guy Sayles | Nov 29, 2017 |
A friend recently invited me to meet with a book group that was reading the late Paul Kalanithi’s beautiful memoir, When Breath Becomes Air. It describes his heartbreaking but heart-mending sojourn through cancer into an all-too-early death at age 37. ...
by Guy Sayles | Nov 20, 2017 |
Maybe, later in the week, I’ll write about the numerous extraordinarily ordinary and ordinarily extraordinary gifts which are part of my everyday life and for which I am grateful. Thanksgiving’s origins, though, are civic: they have to do with the condition and...
by Guy Sayles | Nov 8, 2017 |
Saturday morning, at Barnes and Noble, I was in the café line to order my venti Hot Cinnamon Spice tea. Just ahead of me was a young family. Dad pushed a stroller with a sleeping 8 month old boy, dressed in Carolina blue inside. Mom paid gentle attention to a four...
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