The Christmas shopping blitz takes aim at our wallets months before December 25th ever shows up. In conjunction with the glitzy ads and savvy commercials, we have this inherent expectation that we should be out buying things for people. And so we make our list, edit our list, ‘check it twice,’ ponder how creative we can get this year and how we can … [Read more...]
Surviving the Holidays: The World
The Grand Contradiction Christmas . . . what do you visualize when you think about Christmas? Dancing lights, shimmering bulbs, air thick with the delicate aroma of turkey; wisps ascending from frothy cups of hot chocolate. Maybe your mind races warm with thoughts of carefully selected gifts, sugar cookies rendered brilliant by colored frosting … [Read more...]
Surviving the Holidays: The War on Christmas
It is worthy to note those things upon which we wage war. There are those completely virtuous and entirely untainted causes that are birthed at those seminal moments when the very foundation of the whole of our existence is suddenly teetering on some precarious precipice. Indeed, in every generation there are those utterly horrifying moments when … [Read more...]
A New Start – The Concept of a New Beginning
What would I do with a new start? I mean a really new, ‘new’ start? Not something that looks new because we’ve vigorously spit-shined something that’s old to a new luster. Not some radical make-over of something that’s radically old so that it looks convincingly new. Not a meticulous restoration that’s going to erase the footprints of time and … [Read more...]
Surviving the Holidays: Family and Friends
The holidays bring people together. Parties, various celebrations, innumerable gatherings of various kinds all present us with opportunities to warmly engage people we rarely see throughout much of the year. Indeed, it is a natural time of joining and rejoining. Yet, in all of the merriment and festivities, old issues are given renewed space and … [Read more...]
Surviving the Holidays: Memories
Speaking to Our Deepest Humanity Christmas and New Years are both rich with meaning and filled with ornate tradition. Christmas beautifully embodies and subsequently displays a desperately needed hope that something bigger is with us, that ‘God is with us’ despite how terribly difficult our journey might be, how terrifyingly lonely we so … [Read more...]
Traditions- A Sorely Needed Grounding
Traditions are too frequently viewed as antiquated, outmoded, outdated, and entirely outclassed by all that is vogue and new. They are something of a dusty past that is better relegated to the catacombs of days gone by. Traditions are museum fillers that we might visit when nothing else seems to capture our fancy. Yet, traditions give us a … [Read more...]
Tom’s Clocks – The Privilege and Opportunity of Time
One thing we tend to do with time is fight it. We see it as the immovable and unstoppable adversary that grants us no reprieve, that is entirely unsympathetic to our causes, and that is relentlessly ticking off time until our time is out. Because of its very nature and character, and because of our perception of time relative to our life we are … [Read more...]
The New Year – Clean Slate or Simply Stale
The New Year – Changing Ourselves to Change Our World
It’s just too big, or so we assume. Or conversely, we’re just too small. In embracing either of these deceptive thoughts we wholly negate our ability to be game-changers in a world that sorely needs some serious game-changing. We need not be relegated to the side-lines of irrelevancy. We are here for a purpose. We do bring unique gifts, talents … [Read more...]
Craig Lounsbrough
M. Div., LPC