Finding Your Soul by David Anderson
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Three Dollar’s Worth of God, Please
Yesterday was the commemoration of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was martyred for his opposition to the Nazis. He considered taking refuge in the United States, where he was teaching, but he returned to Germany to continue his work in the resistance. He was arrested April 5, 1943 and imprisoned in Berlin. Three days…
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The Life You Save Is Your Own
In 1988 Bill Moyers sat down with scholar Joseph Campbell to talk about mythology and religion. In one of the PBS interviews Campbell tells the story of two police officers in Hawaii. They were driving one afternoon near the Pali, a place where the trade winds from the north come rushing through a great ridge of…
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Communion on Chemo
Ashley Makar, who guest posts today, is a friend of my daughter, Sharon. Sharon sent me Ashley’s story–a 33 year-old woman with esophogeal cancer, and Pam and I read it together. Well, Pam tried to read it but could not make it through for the tears. It’s a beautiful testament to the power of love…
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Money CAN Buy Happiness
“Money can’t buy happiness.” Turns out, it’s not so. Michael Norton, a professor at Harvard Business School, has done extensive research on money and happiness, and Norton says in fact money can buy happiness. It’s just that we usually spend on the wrong things. Norton’s team did a little experiment. They went to the University…
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The Beautiful Impossible
Unbelieving types often wonder how in the world we can believe in “miracles” that seem so impossible. What’s “impossible” anyway? I was just reading some galactic facts that blew a brain circuit. Get a load of this. “Fourteen billion years ago the entire universe we observe today—containing upwards of 100 billion galaxies—was contained in…
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The Only Way Into the Human Heart
There is an old Jewish story about the young pupil who asks the respected rabbi a question about that well-known passage in Deuteronomy 6:6. “And these words, which I command you this day, shall be upon your heart.” “Why is it this way?” the pupil asks. “Why are we told to put these words upon…
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Top Ten Reasons Why Beer is Better Than Religion
10. No one will kill you for not drinking Beer. 9. Beer doesn’t tell you how to have sex. 8. Beer has never caused a major war. 7. They don’t force Beer on minors who can’t think for themselves. 6. When you have a Beer, you don’t knock on people’s doors trying to give it…
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Doug’s Comet
On Saturday I preached the funeral of a great man. Doug McArthur was the Treasurer of Trinity Church in Solebury, Pennsylvania, where I was privileged to minister for eleven years. As I reflected on why Doug had been such a powerful influence in my life, I realized that he was a grand father. He…
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The End of the Retail God
We all start out with a training-wheels god. It’s always a very much bigger version of mother and father (with all the bane and blessing that entails). It’s a god who looks after you but also looks in on you—so you’d better be good. As we grow older we keep riding the training-wheels god. Our…