When Moses first encountered God, they are not very far into their conversation before he asks God for a name. Relationships require a form of address. Every god had a name by which their worshipers offered praise and supplication. But this god offers a non-name. YHWH. “I Am Who I Am.” The request is not... Continue Reading →
Love Is Freedom
Love is a creative power. It is the unseen symmetry that formed chaos into structure, brought life out of the indeterminate, and summoned consciousness from ether. The generative power of love is the reason living things are found in every nook and crevice of the Earth. Humans can’t live 30,000 feet below the surface of... Continue Reading →
Love Is Learned
Since love lies at the foundation of life, all humans possess the capacity to love, but love itself is learned. We’re born able to breathe, not love. Love is developed as we learn to be less important and self-involved. This is not easy for us, since being self-important and self-involved is the frame of mind... Continue Reading →
Love’s Opposite
There is no fear in love. – 1 John 4: 18 We underestimate the importance of fear. In the positive sense, fear can protect us from harm and catastrophe. Positive fear is what prevents us from driving drunk or shooting people we dislike. It’s the type of fear that was missing the night my teenaged... Continue Reading →
Unmeasurable Possibilities
Many years ago, I visited several times with a man named Edgar Jackson. Edgar was a pastor, a research scientist in behavioral pathology, and a published authority on grief. He was also a mystic and spiritual healer. Experiences that many people dismiss as nonsense were commonplace for Edgar, and he used the rigor of a... Continue Reading →
Faith Part 2
The first act of bad faith is to flee what it cannot flee, to flee what it is. - Jean-Paul Sartre Faith can be dangerous. In 1997, thirty-nine members of the Heavens Gate UFO cult happily killed themselves with drug overdoses, leaving behind upbeat suicide notes on videotape. The believers were liberating their consciousnesses from their... Continue Reading →
The Silent Song
Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. - Anonymous One Saturday night, many years ago, I attended a dinner party hosted by a married couple in one of my churches. Since I didn’t know the other invitees, after we were seated, the wife made... Continue Reading →
Pretending To Be Human
When things get tense, when I start taking my work a bit too seriously, I remind myself that I’m only pretending to be a human being. -Alan Arkin[1] My first job in the substance abuse field was as an off-hours counselor in a twenty-eight-day alcohol rehab. I supervised residents through the weekend hours when there... Continue Reading →
Be Like Buddha
It is good to reflect about whatever forces us to come out of ourselves. - Simone Weil[i] We all have our motivations. Even irrational acts have reasons. We may not understand some of the things we do, but that’s because we don’t understand ourselves. The nature of self-awareness makes us complicated creatures. Perhaps, as some... Continue Reading →
What’s A Person To Do?
My first experience with God occurred when I was fourteen-years old. My mother, after finding racy pictures and lingerie pages from the Sears catalogue hidden under my bed, confronted me about them in the middle of family dinner. The trauma has largely erased all specific memories, but lasting guilt about masturbation was one of them. ... Continue Reading →