We find ourselves captivated by a whole lot of things.  There’s a whole bunch of stuff that we become absolutely fascinated with, sometimes to the point that we’re held in some sort of riveted hypnotic trance.   A lot of times we’re kind of like mesmerized moths who find ourselves irresistibly drawn to some sort of light, erratically fluttering … [Read more...]

There appears to be this morbid and seemingly trance-like focus on all that’s wrong in our world. This negative focus generates a debilitating sense of hopelessness that seems to exponentially grow to catastrophic proportions and beyond. We need to be painfully honest about the difficulties in our world, for to state that they are anything less … [Read more...]

I want to be happy, but I don’t think I want to be satisfied.  I want to experience a resilient and wonderfully endearing sense of contentment that neatly threads itself through every part of my soul, but I don’t want that contentment to morph into the baser mentality of complacency.  I want to keep a weathered eye on every horizon, but I want to … [Read more...]

You ever notice that we seem to be on this relentless quest where we’re scrutinizing ourselves raw in order to ascertain what we think our flaws, our foibles, our weaknesses and our warts are?  We put ourselves under some sort of minutely dissecting microscope with skewed lenses in order to ferret out all of our little imperfections.  We … [Read more...]

What lies ahead of us is shrouded in the milky fog of mystery and the confounding muse of speculation that such mystery provokes.  What lies behind us might tempt us to mystery and speculation, but it will only do so in regard to making sense of what lies behind us.  And in this thing called ‘time’ and in this journey that we call ‘life,’ we are … [Read more...]

No one likes pain.  We don’t go shopping for it and we don’t clip coupons trying to get it at some discount.  I don’t think most of us expend our lives in the pursuit of it, nor are we on some sort of safari with the intent of bagging it as a trophy.  In reality, when we see it coming, we typically run as fast and as far as possible in whatever … [Read more...]

Mankind’s history is strewn with sordid stories of horrific evil.  The yellowed pages of history as well as the fresh pages of the daily paper are littered thick and knee deep with accounts of ruthless destruction, mindless devastation, heartless obliteration and acts so viciously awful that they are at times entirely incomprehensible.  We can cull … [Read more...]

I was thinking.  And the more I thought, the more I realized that there is a whole lot to think about.  But in my thinking, I thought that most of our thinking (despite how much there is to think about) is really pretty standardized and chafingly rote.  We think we think, but the more I think about that, the less I think we think (if you know what … [Read more...]

The nature of our humanity is such that we are thirsty for connectivity, desperate for relationship, vibrantly enlivened by the sharing of souls, and wildly transformed when another life dares to connect with us in those places raw and wounded.  We do not live in isolation, and to think so is to ignore the undeniable connectivity that occurs when … [Read more...]

There is a tremendous and completely ingenious capability inherent in our humanity that exceeds our wildest expectations.  Sadly, we have dumbed ourselves down to the point that we have compromised, and in many cases altogether forfeited these marvelous capabilities.  In doing so, our conviction regarding our capability is marginalized to near … [Read more...]