There is something about New. New is exciting and fresh. A welcome escape from the predictability of what already is.

Not that long ago, what already is was once new itself. But time has a way of making the extraordinary quite ordinary, and we again hunger for the Next Big Thing.

I’m a big fan of New. I’m a big fan of innovation, expansion, and evolution. Often, though, I wonder if our cultural obsession with the Next Big Thing is really more about distracting ourselves from our own perceived shortcomings of what we think is missing in our own lives.

My greatest moments are when I can look at my life and rediscover a sense of humble amazement for all the good I already have in my life. To find contentment and joy in what already is.

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Until you understand their pain, you will never understand the person. Without such understanding, the truth is inevitably distorted, and our expectations of others are flawed from the very beginning.

Understanding another’s pain is itself a flawed concept. To truly know pain you must own it. No matter their best intentions, no one else will ever know exactly how you feel. But what needs to be understood is that there is pain in all of us, the emotional dents and dings collected on life’s journey.

We judge others by what we see in front of us. Actions and attitudes not meeting our expectations are often met with harshness and disdain. A logical response in the mind of many. But what if we Read the rest of this entry »

Alcohol, cookies, and red meat.

And we can’t forget about the swearing.

At various points in my life I’ve given each of them up for the 40 days of Lent. I was brought up believing Lent was about giving up stuff I liked to make the God I was taught to fear happy. Eventually I saw into the significance of what spiritual discipline was all about, but I never saw the correlation between my diet and vocabulary and my spiritual salvation. But that’s just me.

As a spiritual meanderer, I’ve often struggled with some of life’s bigger questions. None bigger than trying to figure out what God wants me to do Read the rest of this entry »