Finding Your Soul by David Anderson
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The Platinum Rule
We all know the Golden Rule, but do you know the Platinum Rule? Golden is: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Platinum is: Do unto others as they would have you do unto them. My brother told me the other day he had left his briefcase in a London taxi—with…
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The Echo of Life
Perhaps the most pernicious assumption about life is that we can attain some ideal by the practice of its opposite. We can see this plainly in world leaders who are certain that one more war will finally bring us peace. We remember the famous line from the U.S. Army officer who said of the Vietnamese…
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Letting the Moonlight Go
This morning when I set out on my run, I put on my orange reflector vest. It was dark. I ran down the road, scudded across Rings End Bridge and turned to follow the Goodwives River as it pours brackish into Long Island Sound. The moon was high above the black silhouetted trees, its gauzy…
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The Bull Rider’s Prayer
I had no cowboy boots. No ten gallon hat. I was invited to the Pro Bull Riding championship at Madison Square Garden, and my son-in-law suggested I wear something Western. He would be, and so would the throngs at the Garden, he said. It’s odd that my English son-in-law who grew up outside London should…
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You’re Not Gonna Wanna Hear This
“No! I told him I wasn’t coming!” The woman answering her cell phone was talking way loud. I was five rows back on the train and the noise disrupted my conversation with Pam. “I don’t care—I’m not going!” Now the whole car was awkwardly silent, forcibly listening. A young man across the aisle from the…
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When God Wants Something Done
Tonight the crowds will gather in Iowa to begin choosing the most important, the most powerful man in the world (we Americans are just shoo-ins for hubris, aren’t we?). The media will blitz us with more information, more “stories” than we really need or care about. Let’s remember that we are in a season that…
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Embers You Need
Starting a fire in a cold grate is tough. It’s been raining here and even the wood in the shed is wet from sheets of water blowing sideways. My kindling is a little damp. It smokes when I lay it on the pile of flaming newspaper and cardboard. I get close and blow like bellows.…
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Christmas in the Trenches
On the day after Christmas the work of Christmas begins. If yesterday we welcomed the Prince of Peace, then today we must live under his most gracious rule. Christmas has the power to break down the walls that separate us and unite us as in our common humanity. That power was never more remarkably demonstrated…
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Miracle Child
In this last week of Advent I have been baby blessed. On the shortest day of the year, I held the tiniest child ever placed in my hands. A four-and-a-half pound girl. I held her and thought, You were destined to be, child, because we had to believe that you could live, that you could…