by David Anderson
How I pray is breathe.” -Thomas Merton I grew up with the slogan, “Prayer changes things,” which I believed. I was just wrong about what got changed. I thought it could change my lot, save my soul, rescue people I cared about. I hoped I could change God’s mind. Not surprisingly, that kind of prayer […]
by David Anderson 5 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Belief, Breathing, Change, Daily Practice, Grace, Healing, Lent, Letting Go, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Surrender, Transformation
Some years ago, the Dove soap company created a video. At the time, a woman sent me the link because it seemed a profound demonstration of self-judgment. The video shows a forensic sketch artist, asked to draw a series of women based solely on their descriptions. Seated at a drafting table with his back to […]
by David Anderson 6 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Happiness, Identity, Lent, Letting Go, Seeing
Renowned preacher and storyteller Fred Craddock swears this happened to him: He was visiting in the home of one of his former students after graduation, and after a great dinner, the young parents excused themselves and hustled the kids off to bed, leaving Fred in the living room with the family pet—a large, sleek greyhound. […]
by David Anderson 10 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Fear, Happiness, Lent
The virulent conflict we experience in our world is fueled by a need on both sides to win at all costs, to be right and—even more important—to prove others wrong. We all have the “talking points” committed to memory. We can rally the facts and marshal the stats to “take down” another person. Yet even […]
by David Anderson 5 Comments Filed Under: Adult Spirituality, Awareness, Character, Community, Lent, Transformation
There was once a young boy who would wander in the woods. His father became concerned as he went deeper and deeper into the forest each time, so one day he said to the boy, “I notice that every day you walk into the woods. Why do you go there?” The boy replied, “I go […]
by David Anderson 4 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Daily Practice, Lent, Nature/Creation, Now/ the Present, Seeing, Silence, Transformation
A man is having an enjoyable boat ride down the river. It is dusk. The man looks up to see another boat coming toward him. His first thought is how nice that someone else is out enjoying the river. Then he realizes the boat speeding, in fact it’s coming straight at him. Faster and faster […]
by David Anderson 5 Comments Filed Under: Anger, Awareness, Change, Daily Practice, Happiness, Lent, Letting Go, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Seeing, Surrender
The original word for repent is not so much lost, as destroyed in translation. Wherever in the New Testament we see the word “repent,” it’s a gross mistranslation of metanoia. The problem seems to have begun with Jerome, who in 382 translated the Greek New Testament into the Latin Vulgate. When Jerome got to Matthew […]
by David Anderson 4 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Change, Daily Practice, Grace, Lent, Mercy, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Seeing, Surrender, Transformation
As artificial intelligence makes leap after quantum leap, we are faced with the very real problem of discerning what is real and what is synthetic media. We’ve all seen deepfake videos that seem absolutely real, and it’s not hard to see the threat this poses to nearly every aspect of our lives and of our […]
by David Anderson 23 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Discernment