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Finding Your Soul

by David Anderson

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Conflict

Judgers and Blessers

February 9, 2015 by David Anderson 2 Comments

Priests and ministers get calls from the local funeral home all the time. Someone has died. They may have been Methodist or Lutheran or Episcopalian, whatever the denomination of your church, but that’s the only, tenuous connection. Would you come and do a service? I walked into the funeral home and met the two daughters. […]

Filed Under: Blessing, Conflict, Family, Grace, Listening, Love

Choose to Love Now

November 3, 2014 by David Anderson 13 Comments

  Pam and I spent the weekend with our parents: Pam with her mother and I with my father. Her father died only a year ago or so, and my mother is gone fifteen years now. Both our parents—vigorous in their old age—have suffered setbacks in the last six months. Pam’s mother is on hospice, […]

Filed Under: Conflict, Family, Forgiveness, Happiness, Healing, Letting Go, Love, Now/ the Present

Two Words and a Wedding

August 16, 2014 by David Anderson 10 Comments

  Tonight I will officiate at my second wedding in a week. I like weddings, but I always struggle with what to say. At baptisms, the parents in the front pews listen even though they’re often tussling with older siblings of the one in white. At funerals, people listen intently. Their stare—both skeptical and desperate—says: […]

Filed Under: Adult Spirituality, Conflict, Daily Practice, Family, Forgiveness, Happiness, Intimacy, Letting Go, Love, Mercy, Reality--trusting it, Suffering, Surrender

Wrestling a Blessing (With a Limp to Prove it)

August 5, 2014 by David Anderson 5 Comments

“What kind of God is this who wrestles with us, Dad?” The voice on the phone was my daughter Sharon. A candidate for ordination, she had preached on the story of Jacob wrestling with God. Now, walking home from church in downtown Atlanta, she was calling me, in a state of holy agitation. “A God […]

Filed Under: Blessing, Conflict, Healing, Surrender, Transformation Tagged With: Blessing

The Empty Boat

March 18, 2014 by David Anderson 8 Comments

A man is having an enjoyable boat ride on a river. It is dusk. The man looks up to see another boat coming down the river toward him, and his first thought is how nice it is that someone else is out enjoying the river and the beauty of a summer’s evening. Then he realizes […]

Filed Under: Awareness, Conflict, Fear, Freedom, Happiness, Reality--trusting it, Surrender

The Hardest Thing to Do

August 12, 2013 by David Anderson 7 Comments

The hardest thing to do is to accept another person as they are. That truth resounded once more this week as I listened to a woman talk about a struggle with her sister. They were often at odds, she said, because their lives were so—blood—similar and yet so completely different. They had different career goals, […]

Filed Under: Conflict, Family, Freedom, Letting Go, Love

Blood is Thicker

July 8, 2013 by David Anderson 3 Comments

This morning I was on the phone with a colleague. As we were winding down our conversation I mentioned that I had just returned from my annual family reunion. “Oh,” he said, “you know what my family calls those annual get-togethers? Dysfunction Junction.” We had a laugh. Families and their awkward attempts at reunion are […]

Filed Under: Conflict, Family, Forgiveness, Grace, Identity, Love

Second Marriage (Same People)

June 3, 2013 by David Anderson 20 Comments

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 […]

Filed Under: Change, Conflict, Family, Forgiveness, Grace, Happiness, Love, Surrender

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