Finding Your Soul

by David Anderson

Healing

Tell The Truth–Before Your DNA Does

What if a total stranger tells you he thinks you’re his second cousin? When my daughter Maggy decided to do genetic testing with 23andMe, she was hoping to learn more about her ancestry. What she didn’t expect was that submitting her saliva for testing would provide the missing link in another man’s search for his […]

by 7 Comments Filed Under: Family, Fear, Forgiveness, Healing

The Return of Innocence: A Week With Two Children

Our grandchildren, ages eight and four, are with us for a week. All day every day. By about day four an adult reaches a saturation point and becomes, in some sense, a child too. After days and nights participating in play, story, physical and imaginative games, make-believe, general silliness, and the deep need for security […]

by 4 Comments Filed Under: Adult Spirituality, Awareness, Awe, Change, Faith/Trust, Family, Grace, Happiness, Healing, Love, Now/ the Present, Reality--trusting it, Surrender, Transformation

Family Estrangement

Cleaning out a basement closet today, I find, stuffed in a box of old sermons and random papers, a twenty-year-old photocopy of an obituary for Robert Foster Anderson. There’s a grainy picture of a man in a white cap. He looks like my Dad, but I never met him. The obit said he had a […]

by 14 Comments Filed Under: Conflict, Family, Forgiveness, grief, Healing

The Big Fix

We tend to approach whatever’s wrong in our lives with a discrete “fix,” even though what’s mostly called for is something wholistic, systemic. I was reminded of that mistaken tendency when I read an article by the Surgeon General, who has made loneliness a major focus of his work. Loneliness, I thought? With all the […]

by 5 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Community, Healing, Uncategorized

Who Is Hard For You To Love? (And How Might You Love Them Anyway?)

“We love because God loved us first” (1 John 4:19). That truth is especially sublime when we hear it in Holy Week, when we watch with awe as someone embraces the whole world in love—and chooses to die rather than limiting or qualifying that love. If Jesus had recanted, if he had just admitted that, […]

by 3 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Change, Choice, Daily Practice, Family, Grace, Healing, Lent, Love, Surrender, Transformation

Of All The Things You Have Done In Your Life, Which Is The One You Would Most Like To Undo?

Plenty of people, especially near the end of life, claim they have no regrets. We ought to feel sorry for them. To regret something we’ve done is to acknowledge a higher principle than we were able to live up to. Regret can strengthen our moral character: Never again will I do something like that. If […]

by 8 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Character, Grace, Healing, Lent, Mercy

Why Is Prayer Such A Struggle?

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 5 Comments Filed Under: Awareness, Belief, Breathing, Change, Daily Practice, Grace, Healing, Lent, Letting Go, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Surrender, Transformation