Finding Your Soul by David Anderson
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Breathing with the Dolphin
“Remember to breathe.” I often say this to people under stress—whether it’s distress or eustress. It’s something I have to tell myself. We don’t have to think to breathe. If we did, we’d fall asleep at night and suffocate in our beds. But like all gifts, autonomic breathing also holds liabilities. We can go months,…
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Lessons in Stone
If you want to know what beauty is and how it is created in this life, build a simple stone wall. When I decided to build two low stone walls on either side of the driveway into our home in Pennsylvania, I went in search of stone. I wished for a truck that would drop…
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My Many Birthday Selves
Today is my 58th birthday. This morning I received a note from an old friend—someone one month younger than I—who posed the question we all ask as the years mount: What am I doing in this old person’s body? I still feel like the person who played the sax in the marching band, the person…
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Raids on the Unspeakable
One of the gifts of vacation is to change up one’s prayer ritual. Normally, Pam and I sit for prayer in a corner of our bedroom. There are two chairs, a small table for an oil lamp, a few sacred books, and a timer that sounds a Tibetan prayer bell when our orison is over.…
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Those Empty Adirondack Chairs
You’ve seen them, no doubt. Down by a little pond in the front yard sit two Adirondack chairs, side by side. The perfect place for two people to relax, look out over the water, maybe notice a frog on the bank and a sparrow in the tree overhead. The settings for these two chairs are…
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Two Words and a Wedding
Tonight I will officiate at my second wedding in a week. I like weddings, but I always struggle with what to say. At baptisms, the parents in the front pews listen even though they’re often tussling with older siblings of the one in white. At funerals, people listen intently. Their stare—both skeptical and desperate—says:…
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For All The Robin Williams’s in My Life
I was startled, then saddened this morning to read of Robin Williams’ death. “. . .suicide by asphyxia.” “ . . . battling severe depression.” “ . . . addiction to alcohol.” “. . . an admitted abuser of cocaine — which he also referred to as ‘Peruvian marching power’ and ‘the devil’s dandruff’.” I…
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Wrestling a Blessing (With a Limp to Prove it)
“What kind of God is this who wrestles with us, Dad?” The voice on the phone was my daughter Sharon. A candidate for ordination, she had preached on the story of Jacob wrestling with God. Now, walking home from church in downtown Atlanta, she was calling me, in a state of holy agitation. “A God…
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Alone With My Thoughts? Just Shock Me.
All mankind’s troubles are caused by one single thing, which is their inability to sit quietly in a room. -Blaise Pascal When I leave on vacation later in August, I am leaving my smart phone at home. There should probably be some version of methadone for those who stop doodling with their phones…