by David Anderson
Where is your life taking you? That’s the question I heard Parker Palmer asking. The Quaker wise man was being interviewed. “I had to ask myself,” he said, “where my life was taking me, rather than just where I was trying to take my life.” It’s important to try to take your life somewhere. Without […]
by David Anderson 11 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Change, Choice, creativity, Faith/Trust, Freedom, Grace, Happiness, Letting Go, Surrender, Vocation/ Calling
My daughter is having a baby which means that I am having a grandchild. Grandparenthood is once removed. This is a birth you did not conceive. You did not have any choice in this matter. Often parents have to “try” to have a child. They decide that now is a good time to allow it […]
by David Anderson 9 Comments Filed Under: Blessing, Family, Grace, Gratitude, Letting Go, Patience, Waiting
The primary cause of mental illness, Karl Menninger said, is the inability of people to forgive themselves for being imperfect. Those words came from Frank Griswold, the former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, preaching at Saint Luke’s this morning. He was speaking of St. Paul, who sought famously to perfect himself through a rigorous […]
by David Anderson 6 Comments Filed Under: Faith/Trust, Grace, Gratitude, Happiness, Letting Go, Mercy, Patience, Suffering, Surrender, Transformation
I was startled, then saddened this morning to read of Robin Williams’ death. “. . .suicide by asphyxia.” “ . . . battling severe depression.” “ . . . addiction to alcohol.” “. . . an admitted abuser of cocaine — which he also referred to as ‘Peruvian marching power’ and ‘the devil’s dandruff’.” I […]
by David Anderson 13 Comments Filed Under: Grace, grief, Surrender
All of us are gifted. All of us have something to offer. All of us can touch a life and be a blessing. We often imagine that other people are gifted, other people can make a difference, but we doubt our own powers of blessing. It’s because we trust in bigness-as-greatness. If I can’t deliver […]
by David Anderson 6 Comments Filed Under: Death/Dying, Faith in Action, Grace
The stories people tell at funerals. We were burying Christine, a woman who would soon have been ninety. A good friend, Donna, remembered how she complained and whined to Christine about some recent changes in church worship, and after a few weeks of this Christine just said, “Get over it. Move on.” Donna was stunned: […]
by David Anderson 11 Comments Filed Under: Adult Spirituality, Death/Dying, Faith/Trust, Freedom, Grace, Happiness, Letting Go, Suffering
The things people tell a minister after church. . . . Yesterday a woman I did not know spoke to me after church—she was there for a baptism. I heard about the church of her childhood, where “salvation” was attained by refraining from smoking and drinking and dancing and cursing. It was a rigid theology […]
by David Anderson 3 Comments Filed Under: Belief, Faith/Trust, Forgiveness, Grace, Love, Mercy
“Never fall within sight of the lodge.” That was my friend Bob’s good advice when I was learning to ski more than twenty years ago. He meant, of course—you can fall all you want on the mountain, but when you come shushing down that gentle slope to the base, you have an audience. People are […]
by David Anderson 7 Comments Filed Under: Faith/Trust, Grace, Silence