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A Conversation on Art And Spirituality

This afternoon, I had the joy to be part of a conversation occasioned by the visit of choreographer Ronald K. Brown who is the artistic director of Evidence Dance Company (scheduled to perform in Asheville on November 10-11 at the Diana Wortham Theater).  Diana...

Little Control, Much Love

This past Monday was the somber 16th anniversary of the 9/11/2001 terror attacks: a plane went down in a Pennsylvania field, another plowed into the side of the Pentagon, and two became passenger-bearing bombs which brought down the Twin Towers of the World Trade...

A Brief Reminder to “Look for the Helpers”

The images of devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey have been stunning and overwhelming: whole cities and towns under water; highways turned to rivers; thousands driven from their homes, and hope nearly drowning in despair. It will take years and billions of dollars...

I am not Innocent and I Cannot be Silent

Both sides in Charlottesville last weekend were not the same. To claim, as the President of the United States did, that the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, alt-righters, and ethno-nationalists—clad in body armor, carrying torches, wearing swastikas, bearing Confederate Battle...

It’s All Gift

Last week, I took a few days to be alone, hike, read, and reflect. My heart had become a clamorous echo chamber; I needed quiet solitude and the sweet music of wind in the trees, water flowing and falling over rocks, the rumble of an occasional thunderstorm, and...

Making an Idol of Trauma?

Cancer has changed—is changing—me in, I imagine, the ways that a variety of life-limiting, life-diminishing, and life-threatening experiences change other people.When, 3½ years ago, my oncologist confirmed that I have Multiple Myeloma (MM), I began a relationship with...

The Music’s Got to Come Out

“Many people die with their music still in them.” I first heard that phrase more than forty years ago from one of my teachers. It registered with me as profoundly true. I haven’t always played my music.I’ve had stretches of time in which I played other...

A Workaholic in Recovery

“I’m Guy, and I’m a workaholic.”That’s the way I’d introduce myself if there were a W.A. 12-Step Group (maybe there is!).I’ve written and talked about the amazing gift of Sabbath, about the importance of a sustaining rhythm of engagement and disengagement, about the...

Not Passing the Buck

It’s well-known that President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk which read, “The Buck Stops Here.” It was the haberdasher from Missouri’s way to describe a crucial quality of all effective leaders: they shoulder, not shirk, their responsibilities.Leaders make tough...

Ministry in the Meantime and the Mean Time

This post originally appeared on the Center for Healthy Churches website on June 27, 2017.Ministry happens in the meantime and in the mean time.The meantime is a season of sometimes bewildering change and troubling transitions. It’s an interval between a past we know...