“In every walk in with nature one receives far more than he seeks. ~ John Muir[1] When I was younger, my friend and I would shoot birds out of the trees. After night church, me and the pastor’s son would shine flashlights up into the trees and shoot the birds with our pellet guns. It pales in comparison to what we pay for others to do in factory farms these days, but it was still cruel! So, given my past,... Read more
It is fairly easy to get a feel for the things Jesus thought were important. His messages and actions were pretty straightforward and the things he said weren’t that hard to interpret. 2000 years of various brands of religion and the multitude of political and ideological thought certainly has created a need for libraries of books and methodologies to make sense of the layers we have piled on top of the basic things he taught. In other words, most of... Read more
When I started questioning my beliefs, a very logical framework for me was parenthood. After all, God is often described as a Father and it was about that time the last of my children left the nest and I was reflecting on what it meant to be a good father. I am not perfect, but even if I am an average father, it makes sense that God should be better than me. This is what it sounded like to me:... Read more
BEING with the Prophets and Poets Laura many times has a better sense of social media than I do. She tells me often that I need to “break up” with people on Facebook. In the end, I agree with her, but I still have some roots from past religious experiences where I believe I can change people. These people also believe the same thing about me. Often, they are easy to recognize because of the religious-sounding names in their Facebook... Read more
A few days ago, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention addressed the members online instead of at their annual meeting. He encouraged the group to proclaim “Black Lives Matter” in times like these with simple language that left no room for argument. Because this is my denomination of origin, I was excited – maybe this would spark something – maybe not. I posted the announcement with an encouragement for all evangelicals to get on board. Come on, it’s the... Read more
Often, during a crisis, I resort to my tried and tested game plans and resolve to “do what I have always done.” However, this crisis does not seem to be much like anything we have experienced in our lifetime and I cannot just respond with traditional strategies. So, most of time, I just sit and ponder and ask Laura things like, “Did I just sit in my chair for 4 hours and do nothing?” I ponder whether this is going... Read more
We are currently living a crisis. It is described as, “an outbreak of respiratory disease caused by a novel (new) coronavirus that was first detected in many locations internationally, including in the United States. The virus has been named “SARS-CoV-2” and the disease it causes has been named “coronavirus disease 2019” (abbreviated “COVID-19”).[1] COVID-19 is spread through contact and has quickly spread throughout the world even to my hometown of Rock Port, MO. The number of casualties changes daily, so... Read more
Adventures are Unscripted Two years ago, I was visiting my son in Taiwan when a series of events started to unfold. Being the person that I am, I tried to plan the trip out so that I could get the most out of it. Almost everything that I planned fell apart. We had to walk from the airport to the hotel, only to find out that the hotel reservation got lost, so we ventured out into the night again to... Read more
Community Outside Religion I have a place I like to gather. It doesn’t serve food or even coffee. It is just a place to gather for people that I have met along the way. Last count, there were 2, 294 people that have visited or stopped by my little gathering place. I’ve had this place for well over a decade. There are times when I just want to stop going there and other times there is no place I would... Read more
We arrrived at the location for the rally a little early. Leawood is a suburb of Kansas City, far from the inner city or any apparent danger. No one was there and we worried that we had the wrong place, but people started to arrived gradually. Most of the protestors were white, but we still felt out of place since we didn’t have any signs or anything to tell what we were rooting for. This was a smaller rally of... Read more
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