by Guy Sayles | Oct 17, 2014 |
Joy can be a trembling wonder. It’s like the trembling of a dog who wags his tail so hard that his whole body shakes when you come into the door at the end of a long day. It’s like the little girl who quivers with excitement on Christmas Eve. The days and weeks...
by Guy Sayles | Sep 29, 2014 |
Good friends give us the freedom to be who we are and to become our best selves. They help to disentangle us from ways of thinking and feeling which hinder us from reaching our full potential. They encourage us to break away from expectations and demands which chain...
by Guy Sayles | Sep 26, 2014 |
We live in a crowded and busy marketplace of competing faiths, dueling deities, and rival worldviews, which means that we have to choose, deliberately and intentionally, which god we’re going to serve and which way through life we’re going to travel. Bob Dylan...
by Guy Sayles | Sep 18, 2014 |
Years ago, I preached a sermon I still regret: a rambling, ill-focused, and sneering screed of a Palm Sunday sermon in which I took cheap potshots at parades. I talked about out-of-tune bands, out-of-sync drill teams, and out-of-shape military veterans crammed into...
by Guy Sayles | Aug 27, 2014 |
The narrator of one of Alice Munro’s short stories described a middle aged woman this way: “Here she sat and saw her day as hurdles got through. Not much to her credit to go through her life thinking, Well, good, now that’s over, that’s over. What was she...
by Guy Sayles | Aug 12, 2014 |
In her memoir, The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day said: “Joy and sorrow, life and death, always so close together!” My experience mirrors hers. I remember the first time Amanda performed in a little preschool choir—how happy I was to watch her stand with her...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 26, 2014 |
Fear often runs and ruins our lives. It causes us to hide our truest selves, hedge our deepest convictions, and hesitate to use our finest gifts. Fear makes us obsessed with security, status, and success. It makes us reluctant to venture beyond the walls...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 18, 2014 |
I got to the river today. I didn’t, as I often enjoy doing, head to Madison County and hike the mountain trails which ring the French Broad near Hot Springs. Instead, I parked my Subaru at the old “transfer station” and ambled along the path to the “Race...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 12, 2014 |
Love is not so much the opposite of hate or indifference as it is the opposite of fear. It is fear which gives rise to hate, indifference, and insensitivity, and also to isolation, loneliness, and uncertainty. “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18)....
by Guy Sayles | Jul 7, 2014 |
Here’s a paradox about human nature: we look for home in a world where we never feel fully and restfully at home. That paradox explains why even the most settled and contented people have moments when they wonder if they will ever arrive where they most want to...
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