Finding Your Soul by David Anderson
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Clocks and Clouds
“All problems are either clouds or clocks,” said the eminent philosopher Carl Popper. There are two different kinds of systems, he meant. To understand a clock you can take it apart, examine its individual pieces, understand it or fix it. A cloud is different. You can only observe it as a dynamic, shifting, morphing whole. …
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What Kind of People Live Here
Unhappiness is an inside job. But you’d hardly know it. We’re so used to blaming others for our state. “I don’t like my job—I work with a pitiful group of people.” “I hate this town. It’s full of lousy people.” Or “I stopped going to that church. It was full of nothing but hypocrites!” Like…
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Afraid to Die?
Are you afraid to die? I have sat by the bed of many a dying man and woman. Those who are afraid of dying are—at bottom—afraid that perhaps they have not actually lived. It doesn’t matter if they are great church-goers. It doesn’t matter if, by all appearances, they’ve been a good person. It doesn’t…
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Trading Gold for Stones
Why is it so hard to trust your own gift? God gives each of us one unique gift. It’s your treasure. The one thing you have to offer the world. But most of us can remember, early on, looking at our gift and feeling like it was nothing compared to what other people had. It…
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Tethering the Cat
Traditions and rituals that surround prayer and worship are essential. I can’t sit for prayer in the morning until I have made a cup of tea and a small plate of fruit. It’s part of my ritual. I do it most mornings before I am actually awake! But this is the glory of ritual—when I…
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Seeing Emily
On Thursday afternoon at 3:30 in a small hospital room in the Bronx, I opened my Prayer Book and prayed “Ministration at the Time of Death.” It broke my heart to turn to page 462. But Gay was dying before our eyes, and now was the Time. On Wednesday afternoon—just the day before—I had sat…
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When Words Fail
How do you communicate with someone who doesn’t speak your language, nor you theirs? That, essentially, is the question Pam and I always face when we visit our French friends, Serge and Betty, whom we visited in Nice for five days last week. We do speak some French, Pam more than I; and they do…
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Flight Attendants, Prepare for Landing
“Flight attendants, prepare for landing.” The captain’s voice is always calm, a studied calm, a Houston-we-have-a-problem calm. Landing means we must leave this glassy smooth cruising altitude of 30,000 feet and bump our way through the lumpy atmosphere below the clouds. I heard the captain’s words Saturday on final approach to JFK, returning home from…
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Wildness is Necessity
If summer is come, June 21st, can vacation be far behind? Unless we’re in for a stay-cation, that means getting out of town, finding our way somewhere else. When we live in town and work in the city, we often head for someplace far from “civilization,” remote, wild. I always develop palpitations when I reach…