Saturday Mornings

You don't find peace   until you love somebody else . -- Ben Rector, Note To Self

My ' Friday Poem ' selection for the week, entitled " Listen to Me ": Listen to me, please, I need to talk to you; Give...

Rushing makes spaces small.  Being still in a space can reveal to us just how big it is.  How could we have scurried right by it, without ...

​You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.
 -- Scott Peck

​Do you ever feel like something is getting away from you?  Even when you feel preoccupied with finding it? I feel like this is happening ...

Fear will push you to avert your eyes. Fear will make you think you have nothing to say. It will create a buzz that makes it impossibl...

We are not  human beings   having a  human  experience, we are spiritual beings, having a human experience . -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardi...

Perhaps it is we, who live rarely with such displacement, who suffe r the most...because we don't recognize where our citizenship real...

My ' Friday Poem ' selection for the week, entitled "TODAY": Today I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word . I’m lett...

The word listen contains the same letters as the word silent. -- Alfred Brendel

Emotional self-awareness is a leadership competency that shows up in model after model. These leaders are attuned to their inner signals, re...

​The soul is a muscle , and it needs to be exercised a little every day. Say a morning prayer just to say something. -- Catherine Hicks ...

Disappointment.  It rings like a smallish word; easily dismissed.  We don't appreciate its inconvenience.  We move on.  We tell others t...

Take your burdens , and troubles, and losses, and wrongs, if come they must and will, as your opportunities, knowing that God has girded you...

The season of Fall has long had a special grip on me.  Something exhaling, because it is over.  Something coming, that isn't yet.  I ha...

I like these ' habit ' recommendations: Plant seeds: Many people have ONE GOAL in life. And they aim their lives for that one goa...

Sooner or later, important action taken comes down to this. Fear: Of being ashamed, feeling stupid, being rejected, being left out, getti...

Failure is information -- we label it failure, but it’s more like, 'This didn’t work, and I’m a problem solver, so I’ll try something ...

Would I feel better? Would I feel better if my team had won? Would I feel better if I knew the ones I love are really ok, are better than...

In my jealousy and self-righteous anger toward HotChurch's pastor, I now see that I was becoming like him. I was driven, obsessed not wi...

"I've been here for over four and a half billion years, 22,500 times longer than you; I don't really need people, but people ...

My Friday Poem  selection for the week, entitled "Geode": The plagues we wished upon ourselves With aloe juice and cayenne The...

From here ....

​Have we so little imagination for  others  at times, because we have so little for ourselves ?

  "It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness ."  Being human always points, and is directed, to something o...

Everything I learned about parenting is leadership and everything I learned about leadership was wrong. -- Bob Chapman

Couldn't find the version, but I like the rendering of this verse. Because of our weakness , we can only be truly strengthened by Go...

What if everything in life really did happen for a reason? What if everything really did have a purpose and it always served us in the long ...

To end the week, a poem entitled "Dear Millennium, Inadequate Witness": Say we no longer bear witness to a body-politic of traum...

Forgiveness liberates the soul.  It removes fear . -- Nelson Mandela

Disruption is a gift . It breaks the habits we otherwise would become so content with and smaller by. We need disruption to look up, to look...

Good leadership is powered by love .  Bad leadership uses fear .

It is impossible to go through life without trust : that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself . -- Graham Greene

We are 'Surrounded By Love'.  Thanks, Dick, for bringing this into focus for us. More pics from our annual church camping weeke...

There is no greater difference between men than between grateful and ungrateful. -- R. H. Blyth Truth be told, we have received gift a...

When should we give up a pleasure? Something in between asceticism and idolatry is room to consider when to choose sacrifice .

Something is purified by sacrifice. We want it, just not the way to it.

Self-create focus -- few things in this life anymore will do it for you .

What if we're just trying to be too many things? What if we became willing to just be who we really are, not everyone else?  Would tha...

A dramatic presentation of the C.S. Lewis ' The Great Divorce last night by Anthony Lawton was nothing short of...sacred.  Great co...

...they practiced the art of paying attention — to us, to what the Lord was doing in us, and to how they might participate in it during our ...

A community is a group of people who agree to grow together. -- Simon Sinek

"Bear one another's burdens ..."  ...from  here . -- Galations 6:2

Most of us want other people to change .

"What do I get out of it?" Ever noticed how short-lived the answers to this question are?

It is easier to let go of what you don’t  have  to hold on to.

Though I am familiar with a few things about myself, there are also many things I don't understand.

We become truly personal by loving God and by loving other humans...In its deepest sense, love is the life, the energy, of the Creator in u...

It's ' commencement ' time again:   Like all great commitments, love operates simultaneously on two different levels: the level...

Pushing through hard things helps us realize that we get more from hard things than just knowing we can get through them.

Who does not thank for little will not thank for much. -- Estonian Proverb

My wife's students were so excited about this. One of them went that night and started working on his own 'arcade'!

There’s simply no real substitute for physical presence. -- Frank Bruni From a delightful article  here ....  Not only is there power in...

Men have far more self-doubt than women realize.   -- Shaunti Feldhahn From an interesting article  here ....

You make known to me the path of life;      in your presence there is fullness of joy;      at your right hand are pleasures forevermore...

Great time today with youth and friends from church! More pics here ....

As an operating device obeying the mind, the brain is a miracle of efficiency. One thing is does amazingly well is to take repeated pattern...

We did what we thought was expected. It's not wrong. It's not enough. It's not the Michigan standard. -- Jehu Chesson, 2015...

Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy . -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer Applicable to a number of situations, one I'm c...

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us. --  Voltaire

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking Him. -- Søren Kie...

Cast your cares on the Lord   and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken. -- Psalm 55:22 A time of open shari...

I will not fear , for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone. -- Thomas Merton God lives with us, i...

How do we become convinced of something?  Is it not most often a result of suffering or struggle ?

We seem to grow proportionately to our willingness to move outside of our comfort zone . We can, and should, move towards challenging thin...

The only thing that can grow is the thing you give energy to . -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We have no choice, we must all die. How we live, however, is entirely of our choosing. -- Simon Sinek What then will I actually choose ...

For the Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with victory. -- Psalm 149:4 It is still hard to image that God deligh...

Communities build bridges of all kinds, don't they?

When pride comes, then comes disgrace,     but with humility comes wisdom. -- Proverbs 11:2 "Lord, help me to have the courage ...

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance...

Researchers at the University of Nottingham recently published findings from their exploration of 83 separate studies on energy and self-con...

For every minute spent organizing , an hour is earned. -- Benjamin Franklin

My, oh my, were they ready to go last night!

So it's searchable: Is it possible that the very handicaps in my life are the keys to usefulness in the service of God? -- Alista...

Every person needs to choose to follow Christ...and. particularly, in the unique way that God has made them to do so.

The soul that is not carefully attended to —the soul whose health is not consistently fought for—will erode spiritually, emotionally, rela...

Perhaps, the question is, what do we allow to most inform how we see ourselves? If we see ourselves largely through the lens of how we be...

What most informs the way we see ourselves ?

I love this message my wife is sending to her students, as they start a new school year today. The way we see ourselves is pretty impor...

We really want people to see us the way we see ourselves .

As long as we imagine it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart .  But it is the other way around -- He is looking for us....

What is most characteristically human about us is the tension between the desire to be "free" — self-identifying and self-choosin...

Another fun time with the fam at Wrigley yesterday... this time they won!

Our thoughts are amazing things.  They are the seedlings of all our desires , actions and beliefs. In fact, what we think about most of the ...

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility . -- T.S. Eliot To embrace what  Suze  is saying, it seems to me, we ...

The key to being a good mentor is to help people become more of who they already are -- not to make them more like you. -- Suze Orman

If you take care of your people , your people will take care of your customers, and your business will take care of itself. -- J.W. Marri...

Be persistent: If you want something badly enough, you need to work at it. This is especially true when it comes to relationships.  -- Br...

Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the Kingdom. If you may have everything by asking in His Name, and nothing without asking, ...

I'm sucker for b-shop quartet style harmonies.  I went to a competition for my 10th birthday and have never forgotten it.

This is our Lord's will...that our prayer and our trust be, alike, large . -- St. Julian of Norwich The weight of the human future...

Straining at the oars of prayer at times can be such a sweet burn in our spirit- muscle . Just a whiff of the possibility that it  matte...

Compassion seems to be a natural response, even though it so often feels unnatural.  It is when we see the object of our compassion through...

“What no eye has seen,      what no ear has heard,  and what no human mind has conceived     — the things God has prepared for those who...

The only thing holding you back is you -- and your willingness to try . -- Jeff Haden

When we tell people to do their jobs, we get workers. When we trust people to get the job done, we get leaders . -- Simon Sinek

We always have visions, before a thing is made real.  When we realize that although the vision is real, it is not real in us, then is the ti...