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 […]
Vocation/ Calling
Fearless Weirdness
I am a little weird. Aren’t you? I’ve been thinking about weirdness the last few weeks because, in the Christian season of Advent, John the Baptist has appeared. Every year he comes to haunt us with his strangeness—his animal skins for clothing, his grasshoppers for food, his cave for a home, his “repent” for a […]
A Cancer Survivor’s Calling
“I know what my calling is,” Brenda said. She is a cancer survivor, alive today, she told me, because three women had carried her on their prayers from fear and death to healing and life. She went on . . . I’ll give you an example. I went for a scan, and I’m so […]
Thinking Big Enough
“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 […]
How to be a Saint
(It’s All Saints Day.) The saints are always those who are able to do deeds of power—sometimes great things and sometimes very small things, but powerful works. Sometimes their mere presence creates blessing and peace. Goodness follows in their wake. They are like Jesus who “went about doing good” (Acts 10:38). This goodness, though, easily […]
Fleeing Dread or Seeking Love
At thirteen I learned to drive a car with an automatic transmission, but as a teen-aged, car-crazed boy there were a lot of cars—some hot—that were off-limits to those who could not work a standard transmission. I was determined to learn. My coolness was at stake. Our one car was an automatic, but my grandfather, […]