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 more →]

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 more →]

The plan is simple. Just admit that you’re stuck, out of any of your own options, and that you’re willing to concede the overall guidance of your life to someone else.

But, wait. This is America. Who stands up and professes their own inability to navigate the waters of their own life? Isn’t stuff like this frowned upon in our culture?

Any quest toward personal spiritual growth inevitably encounters the concept of surrender, when you “let go and let God”, when you realign yourself with your Source and actively trust the Divine Guidance to light your way. For some, letting go is a conscious rational choice. For me, I went kicking and screaming. Surrender was the only option when I ran out of options of my own. It’s never a proud moment when life brings you [Read more →]

He’s been called the Prince of Darkness, even the Antichrist.

But a marketing genius?

Growing up, my religious education included many discussions about Satan, but never once did “marketing genius” come up in the conversation. But Satan has a business to run, and marketing is a critical part of his business plan.

From a marketing perspective, Satan has a very difficult product to sell. How do you sell people on the idea of never living up to their own greatness, of never becoming all they were created to be?

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A prayer and a parachute hoping to tame the laws of gravity and return him safely to the Earth below.

I watched in awe when Felix Baumgartner gave a wave with his right hand, stood up, and stepped off his capsule 24 miles above New Mexico. I watched the footage of his jump several times, more amazed with every viewing.

During one playback I paused the footage a few seconds before Felix began his jump. The camera angle was directly above Felix, offering an encompassing view of him standing outside the capsule [Read more →]

If you’ve ever felt a loving embrace, thank an adjective. Because without the adjective, all you would have felt was an embrace.

Adjectives bring words to life. They turn beer into cold beer, nights into starry nights, moments into magical moments. The colorful and descriptive nature of an adjective is based upon a perception, a judgment, an evaluation of what we think we see in front of us.

Perceptions, judgments, and evaluations are great when we are talking about beer, nights, and moments. But when we add people to that list, perceptions, judgments, and evaluations can sometimes be anything but great.

The ability of adjectives to enhance can be offset by an adjective’s ability to hurt, especially when it comes to people. Our highly competitive world is quite polarizing. Demographically we are all [Read more →]

“It wasn’t cancerous after all.”

We got some great news from my uncle’s doctor about the tumor growing in his right leg. It had been a few weeks since the biopsy with several follow-up appointments rescheduled because the results were still not conclusive. But in the end we got the news we had been praying for.

Like with the biopsy results, sometimes life makes you wait. And waiting can be an emotionally dangerous thing, especially when you’re waiting for news that can change your life forever.

My uncle’s good news did change his life. I’ve never seen him happier or more alive. A stark contrast to the weeks between his initial diagnosis and the the moment before we heard the doctor’s good [Read more →]

I used to think Martha Washington didn’t know what she was talking about. She’s quoted as saying happiness or misery is more about our dispositions and not our circumstances.

Martha, I’m sorry. You were right.

Life is always a lot more fun when our circumstances are exactly as we’d like them to be. How can you not be happy when the world is going your way? But what happens when the circumstances change, when a big ol’ rain cloud shows up in your clear blue sky?

In my own life of late I’ve had a few big ol’ rain clouds showing up and spoiling my view. The clouds shifted my focus and energy in [Read more →]

“To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.” — Mahatma Gandhi

A few weeks back my only brother suddenly passed away. Still very surreal to think of Steve in the past tense. We weren’t the closest of brothers, but a brother is a brother, and gone, sadly, is any opportunity for two brothers to ever have the chance to perhaps build a bridge between them.

Steve was a carpenter by trade, his skills simply outstanding, far beyond my brotherly pride. It was said by someone at his wake perhaps God was putting on a new addition and needed the best carpenter he could find. If that was the case, God, you made the right choice.

THE GLOWING HEART My brother was more than your typical tradesman. He was seasoned, at times gruff, always colorfully [Read more →]