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Finding Your Soul

by David Anderson

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Mercy

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

March 30, 2023 by David Anderson 7 Comments

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 […]

Filed Under: Awareness, Character, Grace, Healing, Lent, Mercy

What Does It Mean To Repent?

February 27, 2023 by David Anderson 4 Comments

The original word for repent is not so much lost, as destroyed in translation. Wherever in the New Testament we see the word “repent,” it’s a gross mistranslation of metanoia. The problem seems to have begun with Jerome, who in 382 translated the Greek New Testament into the Latin Vulgate. When Jerome got to Matthew […]

Filed Under: Awareness, Change, Daily Practice, Grace, Lent, Mercy, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Seeing, Surrender, 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

The Cock Crows

April 2, 2015 by David Anderson 3 Comments

At the heart of the “Greatest Story Ever Told” is a betrayal. No one would call their child Judas. The name is slimed with centuries of condemnation: the lily-livered turncoat who betrayed an innocent man for thirty pieces of silver. We might understand how the crowd could turn on Jesus, but how could someone from […]

Filed Under: Awareness, Character, Faithfulness, Grace, Mercy

The Beauty of Imperfection

October 6, 2014 by David Anderson 6 Comments

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 […]

Filed Under: Faith/Trust, Grace, Gratitude, Happiness, Letting Go, Mercy, Patience, Suffering, Surrender, Transformation

Never Too Late to Love

September 29, 2014 by David Anderson 6 Comments

“It is never too late to love.” That’s what a good friend told me this week. I was telling her of a kind of break-through: I had learned to love someone a little better, to forgive someone (and pardon myself as well). It felt good, but almost immediately I thought, “I wish I had come […]

Filed Under: Death/Dying, Forgiveness, Happiness, Letting Go, Love, Mercy, 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

You Don’t Have to Be Good

May 12, 2014 by David Anderson 3 Comments

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 […]

Filed Under: Belief, Faith/Trust, Forgiveness, Grace, Love, Mercy

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