Finding Your Soul by David Anderson
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Catholic For A Day
I assumed we would go to the Episcopal Church in town, the one we always go to. The parents were away and we were in their home, watching the grandkids for the weekend. Come Sunday morning, we are all enjoying our cinnamon raisin French toast when I say we will be leaving in about an…
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I’ll Have What She’s Having
In a world that values the freedom to choose, it’s ironic that so many of us don’t know what we want. Even the things we “choose” turn out not to be our own choice. Consider the little red car. It sits in the corner of the playroom and no one wants it—until one kid finds…
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Please Accept This Toaster Oven
A few days ago I said to my daughter, “For your birthday we’re thinking we’d buy you a new toaster oven.” She’d been saying she needed one. But immediately she said, “That’s great, but what I’d really like would be for you to come and spend a day with me, just taking care of all…
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The Gospel According to Vonnegut
The shortest distance between two points is usually the most boring. The fastest way of doing something is often the most mindless. Every day we have these to-do lists. Into every 24 hours we stuff 48. When we still can’t get it all done, we hire a coach who can make us even more efficient…
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Kneeling in Mud
“Earth stood hard as iron,” the Christmas carol sings, “water like a stone.” That was winter. Now the spring rains have saturated the softened earth until it’s all a muddy muck. My boots are nearly sucked off my feet. It’s a clear, beautiful day for planting six new trees, but everything is sludge. I can…
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Spare the Rod
Have you ever had to choose your own punishment? Friend and writer Johnna Fredrickson shared a story a few weeks ago that I have not been able to forget. “When I was a kid, two of my playmates were Linda and Brenda McDonald; they lived in the house across the street from me, and they…
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Practicing Resurrection
“If you died tonight, where would you spend eternity?” I heard that over and over in the church of my childhood and youth. It was a stock ending to an evangelistic sermon aimed at getting people saved. I grew up in South Dakota, but if you went to a Baptist church in Wisconsin or Washington,…
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“Higher Love”
On Saturdays our companions are musicians. “Think about it,” Steve Winwood sings, “there must be a higher love—Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above.” That’s the force we’ve been trying to fathom this week in “Stories of Transforming Love”—a power we can name only as a “Higher Love,” Steve Winwood’s 1986 hymn…
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The God Who Fell From Heaven
On this Good Friday, here is a poem and a song. A PRAYER TO THE GOD WHO FELL FROM HEAVEN by John Shea If you had stayedtightfisted in the skyand watched us thrashwith all the patience of a pipe smoker,I would pray like a golden bulletaimed at your heart.But the story says you criedand so…