Not Walking Alone

Barnes and Noble Bookstore at the Asheville Mall occupies two floors; the upper floor circles the lower, is bordered by a high and clear rail, and provides an open view to the floor below.The children’s books and toys are on the upper floor. Last week, as I was...

Immunity? Protection?

Last Monday, I was at Duke’s Adult Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinic for an appointment near the one-year anniversary of my stem-cell transplant.  Over the last month or so, in ways which have surprised me, I have been reliving the hard and surreal experiences I...

Looking for Joy

Until 2007, July 24 was simply another day in summer, a usually hot and humid day, perhaps cooled for a time by a late afternoon thunderstorm. There was nothing in my experience which made it noteworthy.  In 2007, my father died on this day.  Complications...

Hey, Look at Me

My friend Bob and I were sitting on the bleachers just outside the racquetball court and trying to catch our breath between games. A group of race-running, soccer-ball kicking, tricycle-riding, and twirling-dancing preschool children spread-out across the basketball...

The River, the Desert, and the Road Ahead

In March of 2013, on my 56th birthday, I spent some time beside the French Broad River.  In my journal, I wrote:  I want to know more about the power of gentleness, the courage of vulnerability, the expansiveness of honored limits, the serious work humor can...

Liberating Limits?

Walls shelter or confine. Sheltering walls can make a home—a haven and refuge from the world.  Confining walls can make a jail cell—a place of fear and isolation. How we feel about walls depends very much on what kind they are, why we live within them, who put us...

Independence and Interdependence

On this Independence Day Weekend, I’m pondering the necessary tension between independence and interdependence.  It’s a tension which the Apostle Paul described, as I mentioned yesterday, in Galatians 6: “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will...

Highway Proverbs

My friend Terry and I are on our way to Nada Hermitage near Crestone, CO, nestled Sangre de Cristo mountains.  On the road today, it struck me that some billboards attempt to offer aphorisms of wisdom—“highway proverbs.”An insurance company billboard claimed:...