At the age of 16 a young Irish girl joined a convent. The young girl had never had a drop of alcohol, never told a lie, and never been with a man. She spent the first forty years praying the daily office, serving the poor, and giving herself in friendship to the other nuns. Over the decades the other nuns noticed that the woman had grown very wise. Anytime there was a big decision they would lean on her advice.... Read more
I have a complicated relationship with productivity. On one hand, productivity can be about redeeming the time and making the most of my life. Thinking about productivity can push me toward stewardship, maximizing my ability to spend time on things that matter most. On the other hand, productivity can quickly veer off in the direction of neurotic achievement and chronic stress; a sign that I am over-identified with my own accomplishments and attaching too much of my self-worth to my ability to... Read more
I ran across this question recently and it immediately got my imagination going: What are 10 (or fewer) good habits for a person that can make life better? The habit thing seemed constrictive, but the more general question of 10 ways to make your life better kept piquing my imagination, so I decided to try and give it a shot. Here’s what I came up with. What would yours be? 01 Don’t Manage Outcomes: Most of life is unmanageable. Most of the situations... Read more
A few years ago I ran across Brene Brown’s TED talk on shame (me and about 6 million other people). The video provoked me to read Brown’s work, and I spent a few years working through her academic research, books, and articles. I think her best written work is in The Gifts of Imperfection, but honestly Brown’s strength is not her writing. It’s her speaking. Brown is a captivating public speaker with a phenomenal ability to connect to an audience that simply doesn’t translate into print.... Read more
Rich Mullins would have been 60 years old today. Had he lived this long I can only imagine the music he would have made, and the trouble he would have gotten into. Listening to his work still makes me happy. In honor of what would have been a happy day in Rich’s life, here’s an excerpt from a piece he wrote on happiness & one of my favorite songs. 1. Forget about finding happiness. Happiness is not worthy of your... Read more
An old priest spent his entire life serving the same small parish in an over-crowded city neighborhood. Except for the wealthy parish banker and lawyer, his people were barely scraping by. When the old priest lay dying, he sent a message to the parish banker and lawyer to come to his home and sit with him. When they arrived, the two were immediately taken up to the priests bedroom where they found two chairs in the room, one on either side of the priest’s bed.... Read more
In 1874 this painting, Boulevard des Capucines, by Claude Monet was exhibited at a show in Paris. It actually lives here at the Nelson in Kansas City. I spend a lot of time sitting in front of this painting. I love it, but the initial response to it was not good. One critic called it “Hostile to good artistic manners,” and said it should be a crime to put it on display. When people first saw it, they couldn’t discern... Read more
There’s an interesting article up at Fast Company by a writer named Stephanie Vozza. She typically writes in the productivity slash organizer vein, so Vozza brings that sensibility to bear on the concept of creativity. The article caught my eye because I’m prepping a sermon series dealing with art and beauty. I’ve been reading Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics for three straight days now. Either I’m losing my mind or Balthasar is just a tough read. Half of the time I have to... Read more
“Please, don’t torture me with cliches. If you’re going to try to intimidate me, have the courtesy to go away for a while, acquire a better education, improve your vocabulary, and come back with some fresh metaphors.” ― Dean Koontz One doesn’t have a good vocabulary; one maintains a good vocabulary. Words come into use, they fall away. Writers get tracked into patterns of speech that amount to a regression toward the mean. We have to work diligently at the use... Read more
It was another act of attention seeking madness in this gun-crazed, violence-obsessed society of ours… and there’s no making sense of it. I resonate with the comments of President Obama yesterday – I feel numb; like a fog has come over my mind. But, I refuse to let this become normal. The shooting hits home, because the gunman apparently targeted Christians. CNN is reporting that the gunman entered a classroom saying, “I’ve been waiting to do this for years,” the gunman told... Read more
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