Last year, Laura and I wrote a book called “Out Into the Desert.” We decided to make it into an e-book and share it for free. It’s available on our website for download. But, I’m not writing this to sell books, even though my new book called “Being” will be out May 11th. See how I snuck that in? In our e-book about thriving outside of organized religion, we decided to include a chapter about finding our voice. I... Read more
Many of us who are deconstructing and evolving in our faith find Easter weekend to be a bit of a paradox. Since I was a pastor for 20 years, my tradition experienced Easter Sunday as not just as an important day, but literally the hinge on which everything else swung. In many ways, it still is. But in other ways, it is not. Religiously, Easter weekend was the big day. I watched the church across street as they brought in... Read more
About 2 1/2 years ago, I went through what most would call a dark night of the soul. Shadow is that part of us where we put things that we cannot deal with. Eventually it comes to the surface – usually at the wrong time and in the wrong way. This experience for me was a crisis of epic proportions, but as my friend Dr. Paul Fitzgerald says: Never waste a good crisis. I was able to stay in a hermitage for... Read more
“Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way, and nothing stays fixed. You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others, go flowing on.”[1] Heraclitus, 500 B. C. If you listened to me recently, you have heard me talk about being. My new book, Being: A Journey Toward Presence and Authenticity will be released May 4th. I intentionally made a move from being a doer, which seemed to validate me to a way of being... Read more
Carl Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. His influence has existed for a little over 100 years and I often wonder what the Bible would have looked like if we had the influence of his understanding. For example, would we have ever believed in hell or demons if we understood things like shadow and the archetypes. His father was an impoverished rural minister in the Swiss Reformed Church. He considered his parents the handicap he... Read more
With Facebook and other social media, we have become accustomed to getting immediate feedback. After we dream and create and refine our work, we take a chance and share it with the world. Often, we get immediate feedback — sometimes it’s helpful. Sometimes it is not. Social acceptance can make us a slave to creating. It’s almost like we have to keep feeding the beast. Then sometimes are most valuable creations are not received very well. The people that really... Read more
This poem is from a later chapter in my new book, Being: A Journey Toward Authenticity and Presence. Certainty was a distinct hurdle I had to get over. As long as I clung to what I was certain about, my life would be forevermore trapped in the belief system I currently had. But, I couldn’t stay there because I was beginning to doubt many of the beliefs that held that system together. To make it worse the system was sort-of broken.... Read more
Please understand that my tone is not angry. But, I am resolute. It’s a not a time to bunker down. It’s a time to start talking, so I want to be precisely clear when I express what I am disturbed by. To be perfectly clear, I see most of the issues that trouble our world originating inside of organized religion. It’s time for change. The 500 year garage sale is already underway. These are my thoughts. To the white, evangelical... Read more
Some of my old evangelical friends still talk to me occasionally online hoping they can save me. They think because I have adopted a different way of being, that I am dangerously about to fall off some kind of theological cliff or slide down some slippery slope. Most of them have probably already given up on me because I don’t believe like them and they have literally shaken the dust off their sandals and moved on. To me the story... Read more
I will never forget the experience I had one night in a Tea Shop with a man that couldn’t speak my language. I wondered as I left his shop what just happened and it took me months to unpack it. I think about it almost every day. I’m still learning and nurturing the thoughts and lessons from that day. Now, my son is recording audio for the book. It lets me relive the experience in a whole new way! It’s so exciting!... Read more
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