On Aging and Mortality

Sometimes I wish I were a deer for the sheer wonder of its speed or a beetle, small, hard to see, and with a shell that protects my soft guts from harm. But most days, I wish I were any animal, blissfully unaware that they will weaken and die one...

Five things I learned AFTER being a priest, Canon and monk

When I interview people about why they fund, and go, to church (for an upcoming memoir,) the answers I get never cease to amaze me.  And in truth, they were my own answers when I was younger.  People say things like It's where I find God. The friends I see...

Shalom

Today I leave for a time of deep rest. My dog Sugar whispered to me that I would be ok, always a welcome whisper. She told me to remember to let go of my rage and regrets.  It's ok to be handed a cactus, but one need not keep it...

Three Roses

In my youth, I emerged from a dysfunctional and alcoholic family unaware of my wounds and deformities.  My father had barely spoken to me over my first 18 years of life, and my mother lacked any semblance of boundaries.  The result was a young man craving a family and a...

An Average Pooh Bear: An End. And a Beginning

This is the last reference, in non-fiction, referring to the church, for the remainder of my life. (Short of a need to defend myself. perhaps) Today I am bathing in the awareness of how much my life has been healed by the planet on which it walks, lives, breathes, and...

The second family

It was overwhelming to receive hundreds of emails (literally, I stopped counting after 200) high-fiving me about something I wrote in a recent thought-offering.  I  tend not to be the guy who looks at reader metrics.  There is no time for that kind of narcissism and besides, it is usually...

Ten Habits in 2022

Daily habits are the secret sauce to a productive and efficient life. Had I found stoicism as a child, and had I not suffered from so much abandonment and abuse as a child, I would never have chosen the church and never stayed inside it for so long. But now...

Bless the heart, not the land.

Fear is the secret sauce of religion.  Were one to look through the history of religion, one would see quickly, the ways in which failed crops, drought, disease, economic collapse, the loss of battles or the loss of a child would throw a king or queen, bishop or lord into...