Finding Your Soul by David Anderson
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Leaving Your Job, Finding Your Soul
When people find out you’re newly retired they often ask how you like it. I’ve tried to be honest and tell people it was hard for me. I thought that just because I knew all the pitfalls of over-identifying with your job—and then losing that total identity—I wouldn’t have to fall in that pit. But…
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Meditation Upon a Leaky Roof
It’s wet, she says. Why is the carpet all wet here? We have just gotten out of bed, and Pam is standing by the door to our bedroom. I go over and run my hand over the carpet. Soaked. I look up to see where the water is coming from. The ceiling looks perfect. I…
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Not Sure Prayer Works? Pray Anyway.
I’ve been praying for a young girl. She’s battling a rare disease, and it’s gone on for month and months. I keep praying, and yet I often wonder about praying for others—“intercession,” in the classic types of prayer. At some point I let go of prayer as telling God stuff, asking God for things, getting…
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The Passionate Center
I am surely an Anglican because I am hopelessly in love with the via media, the “middle way” for which we Anglican/Episcopalians are either famous or infamous. I know the pitfalls of taking the middle road—spinelessness and timidity. As Yeats put it, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”…
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My Evil Eye
Last week I visited the Pittsburgh Zoo with Pam and our two grandchildren. We came midafternoon, and the zoo closed at 5:30, so after buying our tickets—which weren’t cheap—we decided to hop on the tram instead of walking. Nope. Not without a ticket. We go to the ticket counter—it’s five bucks apiece. That’s twenty dollars…
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Suffer The Little Children
It’s always a revelation when it finally dawns on parents that most of what they love about their children, and most everything that drives them crazy, is merely a genetic reincarnation of themselves. We adore the little dimple we share, and swell with pride when they show the same early inclination to art or music.…
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Red, Wise & Blue
I was raised in a politically/religiously balanced home. My father was deeply engaged in politics, and my mother had only one thing to say on the matter: “Politics stinks to high heaven.” For her, it was a distraction from the ultimate concern of life, which was faith in God. Politics concerned itself with the things…
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A Shining Palace Built Upon the Sand
Sitting on a beach in Nova Scotia, watching kids play in the sand, I’m remembering a modern parable that Harold Kushner tells in his book, When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough. “I was sitting on a beach one summer day, watching two children, a boy and a girl, playing in the sand. They were…
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Proud Flesh
It was a small procedure, but even “minor” surgery requires general anesthesia, intubation, and signing a form that says if you die in there it’s not like they didn’t warn you. I walked into the OR in my johnny coat, an IV dripping in my arm, and there before me was a narrow operating table…