Finding Your Soul by David Anderson
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Unexpected Messenger
Often God uses someone—or something—as an unexpected messenger. On Wednesday morning I came into the office and started working—fast. Sunday we had forty stewardship visitors coming to pick up their packets and . . . the “packet” was mostly a figment. I walked into my assistant’s office and started ticking off the critical components we…
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Life and Death Lunch
I love to eat. But make it fast. So, along with twenty-five of my colleagues at a recent clergy conference, I grumble when we are told that at lunch today we will begin with an exercise in mindful eating. We are to get our food from the buffet, sit and wait for everyone to begin…
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“Obsessed” With Abortion, Homosexuality and Birth Control
The church is “obsessed” with abortion, homosexuality and birth control. That comment by Pope Francis a few days ago made global headlines. It’s no mistake that all three bugbears are physical, of the body, sexual. Little-mind religion seizes on the carnal sins and makes avoiding them a cardinal virtue. That’s because it is mostly preoccupied…
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Losing Your Faith, Finding Your Soul –launches today!
After years in the making, my new book is published today. It’s all about finding new life . . . after your old life has failed. That is the paradoxical promise of God. And once it dawns on us that this divine gift is reserved only for people who’ve somehow managed to lose their lives,…
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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,…
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A Letter to Ernest Hemingway
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -Ernest Hemingway Dear Ernest, You are quite right. Very often, intelligent people are very unhappy—especially if by intelligence you mean only that narrow band of knowing lodged in the brain. For about four hundred years now, at least in our Western culture, that kind of…
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Don’t Fall in Love with Pain
“Every email she writes, every conversation always begins with some trouble or difficulty, some illness that’s plaguing her, some suffering in her children, some pain wracking a relative or loved one.” The woman talking to me was describing a friend. “I think if I called her attention to it—if I showed her the emails, she…
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The Charlie Brown Burning Bush
I love to run in new places. At home I run the same loop—it takes me down to Long Island Sound and it’s beautiful, but I know it so well that I can almost run it blind. This morning I am running in Knoxville, Tennessee, where my father lives. I am a little stiff. My…
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The Magic Word–Now!
I heard a darling—and revolutionary—story. A mother tells of her four year old at the dinner table, eating pizza. “Pass the cheese,” says the child. Looking to instill a sense of manners, the mother says, “What’s the magic word?” “NOW!” says the kid. That’s bad manners, but very good theology. Most of us are so…