I was blown up in a roadside bomb attack in Iraq … when the explosion occurred, I immediately left my body. I didn’t experience the classic tunnel of light that others have reported. I simply blinked to another place, one that was familiar in essence. So begins the preface of Natalie Sudman’s book Application of Impossible Things. It’s a fascinating tale of her near-death experience (NDE) while serving as a civilian employee of the Army during the Iraq War. The... Read more
Did you know that story of the birth of Jesus is told two different ways in the Bible? If you look through the four gospels, you’ll find that only two cover the actual birth, Luke and Matthew. (Mark and John pick up the tale when Jesus is a grown man.) And while there is some overlap in the tale, the details vary. One mystery of the Christmas story: who visited Jesus at his birth? In Matthew, the first visitors to greet the... Read more
This story appears in my book Wake Up Call, which one reader called “the best spirituality book of 2024.” At some point in time, have you wondered if God really exists? You may have asked God to show you a sign, any sign, that he or she is real. You want to know your prayers aren’t going out into an empty void, that your faith isn’t a sign of some deeply ingrained ignorance, that there truly is someone or something looking... Read more
I’ve written a lot about finding your purpose or calling. In fact, my book Wake Up Call includes seven different stories related to the topic. I’ve even written a more recent story for those 60-plus here. And while this is another column about purpose, this one has a twist. If you were to read all the stories I’ve written on the topic, you’d come away thinking everyone has a unique purpose (or calling) that they’re meant to fulfill and it’s... Read more
As a child, my cousin Linda and I were close. But after her family moved to Florida, we lost touch for decades, until we reconnected a few years ago. Linda recently contacted me with some bad news. She’s dealing with Stage 4 cancer. And while all of our lives have an expiration date, hers may be approaching faster than anticipated. Like me, Linda’s religious beliefs have strayed from the Catholicism we both grew up with. She now identifies as a... Read more
What will you be doing this Thanksgiving? In my home, we’ll have a glorious turkey dinner with all the fixings, a football game on the TV, and the beer and wine will flow. My wife and I will be with our small extended family, the first time we’ve all been together this year. We’ll kick-off dinner with a short prayer. It’s a family tradition that was first introduced to me by my father who would say grace, or a short... Read more
How do you measure the passage of time? For most of us, the primary way is through the annual observance of birthdays. But birthdays aren’t always the best measuring sticks of how little or how far we’ve progressed in our lives. Age doesn’t measure our level of maturity or our growth as human beings. Some of us bloom late; I didn’t graduate from college until I was twenty-five. My first management position came at the age of thirty-nine. Others find... Read more
This is a version of a story I first published on Patheos several years ago. The 2024 election results have left many people and communities in a deep funk, so it seemed appropriate to repost it now. Now that we’re past the election, how do you feel? I must admit that on the morning of Wednesday, November 6th, I awoke with a case of the blues. (Ironic word, isn’t it?) I’m slowly getting past it, and preparing how to cope... Read more
Last week I wrote about witches. This week, I’m going to take a look at their second cousins, shamans. Witches and shamans share some similarities, like a belief in the power of nature and the ability to communicate with spirits. But there are also differences. In the book Shamans Through Time: 500 Years on the Path of Knowledge, editor Jeremy Narby features the first-hand accounts of over sixty anthropologists who have studied and lived with shamans from around the world.... Read more
Witches get a bad rap. Sure, everyone loves witches around Halloween but by Thanksgiving they’ve worn out their welcome—and are again seen by many as inherently evil. They are people (or more specifically, women) to be feared. It’s a stereotype that’s rooted in centuries of misinformation, superstition, and just plain stupidity. The truth: For centuries, “witches” were often viewed as healers within their communities. As Google Gemini explains, “Witches were often women who possessed knowledge of herbal remedies, midwifery, and... Read more
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