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Making the Days Count

by | Oct 23, 2016 | 16 comments

This past week, in a conversation about my ongoing journey with Multiple Myeloma, a friend said, “If you hadn’t gotten this diagnosis . . . . ”  I didn’t hear the rest of her question, because I was so startled by my immediate internal response: “I wouldn’t want...

Being and Becoming Ourselves

by | Oct 14, 2016 | 0 comments

Though my children are well into their thirties now, my heart hears echoes of “Daddy, tell me a story.” I cherished story-time with Amanda and Eliot. Sometimes I read other people’s stories to them; it was a delight to watch their eyes widen as we traveled through the...

Autumn

by | Oct 7, 2016 | 16 comments

Bruce Springsteen is 67, and Bonnie Raitt will soon be. Eric Clapton is 71; so are Van Morrison and Steve Martin. Lucinda Williams is 63. David Letterman and Emmylou Harris are 69.Some of my students at Mars Hill University have grandparents who are younger than these...

Wordlessness and the Witness of Listening

by | Sep 24, 2016 | 3 comments

I’ve ransacked my mind and heart, looking through stacks of ideas and poking around in boxes of feelings, to find something helpful to say about the police shootings of African-American men in Tulsa and in Charlotte.I’ve come up empty.My search for words has confirmed...

Not-Doing as a Way to do What Matters Most

by | Sep 17, 2016 | 2 comments

What do we do (or not do?) when we feel hollowed-out and ground-down by life’s pressures and demands?Either George Patton or Vince Lombardi or Aphoristic Anonymous said that “fatigue makes cowards of us all.” Whether or not it always turns into cowards, it is...

Fifteen Years Ago and Now

by | Sep 10, 2016 | 2 comments

Fifteen years ago this weekend, I began my work as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Asheville. Far more significantly, our nation sustained the worst-ever terrorist attacks on United States’ soil.Those attacks left ongoing grief, anger, and anxiety in their wake....