Veal or Chicken?

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” –Proverbs 22:6 When I was a kid, much of my free time was devoted to church and church activities. If there was an event that included my age group, I had to attend or […]

Sorry…Stolen from a friends blog

A friend of mine (Brian , who will remain safely anonymous…ooops) wrote recently about an apology he heard at work. I am shamelessly stealing this theme. To paraphrase, one of the things he said was that good apologies feel like you are ripping something out of your chest. Agreed! A former friend of mine was […]

Vergence, Part 3, the Practice

I start this entry by describing the best class of my undergraduate years. It was my final semester and I was taking 19.5 units. By that time, I had completed all my religious studies and I had only upper division psychology classes, including my thesis left. Oh, and one pesky general ed. class. I needed […]

Vergence, Part2, My Faith

So I am culturally a Christian, but pluralistic in practice. Can I say I believe anything? Dogmatically, no. But here is my best attempt at explaining what it is I believe and how that fits into a Christian context. There is a force, a wind, the spirit that is the energy at the core of […]

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 […]

From IS to IS Like

Shopping at noon on the Saturday before Christmas is not a brilliant plan for those people like me that abhor crowds. I am done with my own shopping, but I needed to take my son shopping and he wanted to go to Target, […]

Now is the winter of our…

Discontent For those of you who have followed by blog over the years, I sincerely apologize if I have caused you metaphysical whiplash. But here I go again. I have been thinking a lot about the book Naked Spirituality again, specifically winter. I won’t bore you with my substandard summary. But I will say that […]

Human: Individuals or Organelles?

When I was in High School, I worked summers at a day camp. Most days we went on a field trip of some sort. On one particular day, we went to a local park. We started to play kickball and all of the counselors participated. It was a particularly hot day, so I kicked off my […]

Afterlife Lotto

I admit it. I bought 4 Mega Millions tickets. I got 2 for the Wednesday drawing and 2 for the Friday. “But Ben, why would you throw away 4 perfectly good dollars.” Two reasons: 1. There is not much risk on the front end. I will not miss $4. 2. The potential rewards are freakishly […]

Thou or It?

My spirituality has taken a radical shift since becoming a hypocritical agnostic. I say hypocritical because I am not a very consistent agnostic. Since entering the winter of my discontent, I have distanced myself from the god of my past. But oddly enough, I am experiencing a kind of spiritual renaissance. While I see less […]