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Finding Your Soul

by David Anderson

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Community

How Can We Get Beyond The Bitterness and Division In Our World?

March 7, 2023 by David Anderson 5 Comments

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 […]

Filed Under: Adult Spirituality, Awareness, Character, Community, Lent, Transformation

Meeting My Brother in the E.R.

February 16, 2023 by David Anderson 4 Comments

I was already aware of him when he walked in. He was the man whose car pulled up to the door just ahead of us, and I had hopped out quickly to get ahead of him. Who knows how deep the line is inside that door. I am on vacation in a strange town. I’ve […]

Filed Under: Community, Grace, Gratitude, Healing, LIght, Love, Mercy

Holy Envy

February 9, 2023 by David Anderson 7 Comments

As a priest, I’ve officiated at hundreds of weddings, but Friday I attended my first Nigerian wedding. If you remember the scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when the conservative, understated parents of the WASPy groom first meet the bride’s big, boisterous Greek family, you know how I felt walking into the banquet hall. […]

Filed Under: Change, Community, Family

It Tolls for Thee

March 26, 2015 by David Anderson 16 Comments

Rarely am I so moved. The funeral for my mother-in-law ended. I lined up with five other pallbearers and walked the white coffin to the hearse. We got in our car and waited for the procession to begin. Pam began quietly to weep. There is something startling about the hearse and the coffin, the physicality […]

Filed Under: Community, Death/Dying, grief, Happiness

Monastic Gin

April 27, 2014 by David Anderson 7 Comments

I am sitting with my father, playing gin rummy, but I might as well be sitting in a monastery or any retreat house. I am here for a week. Our days are simple and highly ritualized. Breakfast is at 8:30. (Two eggs on an English muffin, daily, for him.) We may converse for a while […]

Filed Under: Community, Daily Practice, Family, Intimacy, Prayer/Meditation, Silence

My Night in Sing Sing

March 1, 2014 by David Anderson 6 Comments

On Monday night I sat in the most exciting, powerful and inspirational circle I’ve experienced in years. I was conversing with convicted felons at Sing Sing prison—homicide, armed robbery, drug dealing. We sat in a classroom, maybe fifteen of us from the “outside” and ten inmates. We had come to learn more about a program […]

Filed Under: Change, Community, Freedom

Thinking Big Enough

November 8, 2013 by David Anderson 6 Comments

“If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.” -Wes Jackson   Those words gave me pause—a big pause. I read them in an article about sustainable agriculture (as a South Dakota native it’s sad to see the systematic poisoning of the earth as the basis for our agri-business). Wes […]

Filed Under: Community, Daily Practice, Faith in Action, Hope, Service, Uncategorized, Vocation/ Calling

It’s OK to be Stressed!

May 28, 2013 by David Anderson 1 Comment

Why are you stressed? Turns out, that’s the key question. Rabbi Harold Kushner writes of a study, some years ago, at Duke University Medical Center. They gathered up a couple hundred Type A people, the hard drivers who are always on the run, always working, honking at the guy in front of them who doesn’t […]

Filed Under: Community, Daily Practice, Faith/Trust, Happiness, Vocation/ Calling

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