Tonight, we watched a video in Stephen Ministry that left me moved and feeling heavy at the same time. Dr. Diane Langberg spoke a message about the reality of brokenness and suffering in our lives and the need for compassionate Christians to sit with the hurting and minister with presence. I’ve been thinking about human […]
I’m awakened in the morning by a phone call — It’s Mr. Smith, and his car needs a jump. The evening before we had spotted him in the parking lot; he was still seated in his parked car, eyes closed in rapt concentration or heavy sleep, we couldn’t tell. “It’s jazz,” he explains later. He […]
The longer I spend around a church, the more I see that people are really, really broken. And that’s really good for me to see, because I’m starting to grasp how deep the Father-love really is, and how unconditional it is. Loud are the songs of broken sinners. Henri Nouwen is teaching me to stare […]
I found myself drawn to grids mostly because they were manageable. You can write your way out of one as soon as easily as you write your way in. Grids are safe, incubators for words and ideas to sit, like plastic-wrapped photo frames, or little cardboard boxes filled with styrofoam peanuts, keeping the hallowed words […]
Being assertive is really unnatural for me. Eric called me out on this the other day: “Does anybody want to drive?” vs. “I’m really tired because I’ve driven a lot today. Can somebody else drive for us?” It never even CROSSED my mind that I could say “Hey, I’m tired and I don’t want to do this.” […]
I dreamt the other night that I was running at midnight along the shore, no, there were cliffs, and we were running along the cliffs that wrap around the coast. The weather is warm, no, it has an icy bite, but we run anyways, out and around the shore, through silhouetted tree branches that bend […]
Being around white people (and one Kenneth Leung) is making me more direct. There. I said it. And I really love it! One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I don’t always know how to be genuine; that I can often say one thing but inside something else is going on. This often has to […]
4 cities, 2 continents, we made it happen for like 30 seconds:
I feel pretty comfortable walking around shirtless. Sunday at 3pm before service I walked into the chapel sans shirt to find Albert there doing couples’ counseling. Guy: hey, he’s shirtless. Albert: yeah (silence)… he’s an intern. I blame this all on Dave, who is shirtless over half of the time. My diet consists two parts peanut […]
