Attachment and Engagement

Here are thoughts for a rainy day from a practicing agnostic Christian Buddhist. I have been struggling of late with the third noble: suffering is the result of attachment. I think what I got hung up on was the antonym of attachment: detachment. Detachment denotes aloofness. Visions of a monk in a cave come to […]

Noteworthy

I stumbled onto an old album by Pete Seeger at the Sing-along Sanders Theater. The album covers many traditional and folk songs. As the name would imply, the audience sings along. One song in particular just released waves of pent up emotion coursing thought my veins. It was “Amazing Grace.” I was at my desk, […]

Open Letter to Children’s National Medical Center

To Children’s National Medical Center: Below is a physician’s review I posted to Angie’s List. Since your survey was eliciting feedback, I thought you should know. Dr. Yewande Johnson met with our family shortly before my son was scheduled to go into the OR for his first of two surgeries in one week. She took […]

Lament of a Tired Soul

I have a favorite poem. It is the “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot. It is a poem of a tired soul. The first stanza in particular resonates with me today. Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized […]

The Black Hole

Deep inside of me there is a black hole. It is a malevolent mass of pure evil. Were it to be freed, I might be capable of doing unthinkable things. Usually, it is under wraps. It is buried so deeply in my psyche, that under normal circumstances, I cannot even access it. But under prolonged […]

The Long Slog

Most days, VACTERL is just a pain in the ass. It’s just time consuming and it wastes your child’s time, your time and family time. There is a checklist of tasks that you must worry about every day, which normal families take for granted. But over time any set of tasks can become routine to […]

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 […]

I’d rather laugh with the sinners, than cry with the saints

The older I get the more I think that I may not be compatible with heaven. It is most assuredly not for a lack of information. I have heard about heaven and hell for all of my life. I have spend most of my life surrounded by people that knew beyond a shadow of a […]

A Generous Idolatry

I have been thinking about Idols a lot recently (not the Paula Abdul kind). The second commandment says you shall not make carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven or above. If you go with the narrowest interpretation of the commandment, it would be pretty easy to keep. I do not […]

Vergence, Part one, the Journey

So what the heck DO I believe in? Since joining Imagine about a year and a half ago, I have gone from an ice cold stage, through a period of complete disorientation and now at long last, I think I am emerging into a new spring renewal of spirituality. But what of faith? My personal […]