by David Anderson
The single challenge of life is change. We don’t like it, yet we know it is the only constant. Every day we get up and . . . things have changed. Nothing is where we left it last night. Not the kids, not the dog, not the roses in the garden. Everything we had just […]
by David Anderson 5 Comments Filed Under: Change, Faith/Trust, Happiness, Now/ the Present, Reality--trusting it
I don’t know if it’s true, but someone once told me that domesticated birds can be trained to sit by an open window—and not fly away. You put their perch next to an open window, but you tie one foot to the perch, so that when the bird attempts to fly out the window, it […]
by David Anderson 4 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Change, Choice, Faith/Trust, Fear, Freedom, Happiness
Today is my 35th wedding anniversary. Pam and I were married June 3rd 1978 in Panama City, Florida. After 35 years, my marriage is blessedly the most important thing in my life. But it wasn’t always. We all marry a fantasy, an idealized image of the perfect husband or wife. A few months or years […]
by David Anderson 20 Comments Filed Under: Change, Conflict, Family, Forgiveness, Grace, Happiness, Love, Surrender
I found out today that the church I grew up in had been torn down. Calvary Baptist Church in Yankton, South Dakota. My cousin Tom, who still lives in South Dakota, sent a link to a story in the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan—or the P&D, as we called it, the newspaper I used to […]
by David Anderson 18 Comments Filed Under: Change, Community, Family, Love
“I have a great quote for you!” It was my friend Judy—the first thing she said to me when we met on a retreat this weekend. “Let me have it.” I said. “Change is inevitable,” Judy said, “growth is optional.” I nodded and we both smiled. I saw a tee shirt once that said, “Change is […]
by David Anderson 6 Comments Filed Under: Change, Faith/Trust, Faithfulness, Happiness, Letting Go, Reality--trusting it, Surrender
Often it is some brush with mortality that awakens the heart. Annie Dillard lived a long time beside Tinker Creek, but it wasn’t until she nearly died of pneumonia that she began to go down and sit by that creek, watching the frogs and the bugs, the birds and wildflowers. She jotted down notes, kept […]
by David Anderson 4 Comments Filed Under: Change, Now/ the Present, Seeing, Vocation/ Calling
Everybody knows about placebos and the placebo effect. If you think the little pill will help you, it often does—even when there’s no medicine in it. But I’d never heard of a nocebo, until last week when it showed up in my email box. “Nocebo” was my word for the day. “A substance producing harmful […]
by David Anderson 3 Comments Filed Under: Change, Faith/Trust, Fear
On March 7, 1965, 600 civil rights marchers left Selma, Alabama for Montgomery. Governor George Wallace called the march a threat to public safety and vowed to do all in is power to prevent this rabble from marching all the way to his office in Montgomery. When the 600 came to the Edmund Pettis Bridge, […]
by David Anderson 3 Comments Filed Under: Change, Community, Faith in Action, Fear, Forgiveness, Justice/Peace, Repentance