Finding Your Soul by David Anderson
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The God of Disruptions
Often it is some brush with mortality that awakens the heart. Annie Dillard lived a long time beside Tinker Creek, but it wasn’t until she nearly died of pneumonia that she began to go down and sit by that creek, watching the frogs and the bugs, the birds and wildflowers. She jotted down notes, kept…
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Nocebo No more
Everybody knows about placebos and the placebo effect. If you think the little pill will help you, it often does—even when there’s no medicine in it. But I’d never heard of a nocebo, until last week when it showed up in my email box. “Nocebo” was my word for the day. “A substance producing harmful…
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The Coming of Justice
On March 7, 1965, 600 civil rights marchers left Selma, Alabama for Montgomery. Governor George Wallace called the march a threat to public safety and vowed to do all in is power to prevent this rabble from marching all the way to his office in Montgomery. When the 600 came to the Edmund Pettis Bridge,…
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Am I Still Five?
A woman told me yesterday of her journey to see her grandchildren in Colorado. I asked how the time had been. Immediately she opened the trove of pictures on her phone and showed me an iconic image. It was a little girl smiling over a birthday cake all lit with candles. Five of them. The…
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Identity Theft
A clergy friend recently retired and moved to North Carolina. I asked how it was going. He didn’t miss the night meetings, he said, and he was playing more tennis. But—he missed Sunday mornings. For thirty-five years he’d led people in prayer and worship, and listened at the door to a hundred little personal stories.…
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God is Not Urgent
I was asked to speak to a group this week on New Year’s Resolutions, and I decided instead to speak on new priorities. I don’t care much for resolutions, since they are mostly attempts to arm-wrestle small problems into submission without having to look plainly at one’s life. As soon as I focused on priorities…
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This Year I Will . . .
The human being is capable of great idealism . . . and great delusion, as these resolutions humorously attest. Resolution #1 2010: I will try to be a better husband to Marge. 2011: I will not leave Marge. 2012: I will try for a reconciliation with Marge. 2013: I will try to be a better…
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The Left-Handed Blessing of Christmas Eve
On Christmas Eve, as I placed a piece of bread in a man’s hands, he gripped my arm and said, “29 years of sobriety. Thank you.” Normally, the communion ritual is mute, except for the words of administration. “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.” Sometimes the recipient says only, “Amen.” So be…
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We Need a Little Christmas
You know that holiday music staple, taken from Jerry Herman’s Broadway musical Mame. In the show, the song comes just after Mame has lost her fortune in the great Wall Street crash of 1929. Mame decides that she, her little nephew Patrick and the two household servants need some cheering up. For we need a…