The Winter of My Discontent

VACTERL occasionally gives you a little break. Though you may have an onerous lists of tasks required to keep your child happy and healthy, you get into an offbeat rhythm that mimics normal life. You find a place of serenity and you think that you have beaten back the deadly predators. But really you are […]

Bliss

I had a great moment today. Ethan made his first basket during a game. The league he plays in has always been very accomodating, but he has just not been able to compete with the other kids. But today, right at the beginning of the game, there was a perfect moment…swoosh, nothing but net. I […]

Imagine, part 6

Crash! I preface this post with a couple of thoughts. It is impossible for me to put into words how much I love my son. He inspires me daily. Let me be clear I do not in any way, shape or form blame him for what happened to me. What follows is purely the result […]

Imagine, part 2

On three: One, Three, Two… I know, I know, I already published part 3. I winged part 2 at the meeting, but I want a complete set so here goes Paradise Lost So purely from a faith standpoint, I had a pretty great early childhood. But unfortunately as I got older, the adults around me […]

Git Off My Lawn

Yes, I am becoming that guy, the old man shaking his cane at the neighborhood kids for playing in his yard. It hit me yesterday when I reread my own posting. There is a core of white hot anger at my core that has to do with the way that organized religion #$@#%!! (made sweet […]

Spooky Spells (alternative title: Altered States)

I had lunch with a friend today. We were kidding around when the topic of religion came up. We have similar backgrounds and have complementary world views. He said something that, while making me laugh, took me to another place and time, when I was another person. It would be like watching someone brush their […]

Imagine, part 1

What do you know about the circumstances of your birth? There are a couple of tidbits I remember hearing about the day I was born. First of all it was August and my mother just wanted me out. It was hot and nobody in Colorado had AC back then, except of course the hospital. My […]

Dream

Last night I dreamt that I was in a dinner with my wife’s grandparents. It was just the three of us. Her grandfather and I were on one side of a booth, her grandmother on the other. There was a TV overhead. They were playing a news story about bullying disabled children. Jenn’s […]

Dressing for Success

My mother taught me a lesson that has become part of the core of who I am. It was a very short anecdote from the church she grew up in. Every Easter at Glad Tidings Assembly of God, the pastor’s wife wore and old and often out of style dress. Why? She did not want […]

I Can Do All Things (Phil four thirteen)

Go to church long enough and the same topics and scriptures are repeated. If they use the lectionary it is roughly every three years or so. At most churches it is somewhere between 3 and 5 years…except around Christmas and Easter, they are repeated annually. Rarely do you hear a good sermon about Jael driving […]