Finding Your Soul by David Anderson
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Learning from Whitney Houston
When a “star” like Whitney Houston dies in a Beverly Hills hotel bathtub, everyone is shocked. We shouldn’t be, of course. Whitney Houston, like so many stars and starlets before her, slid into drug abuse, did stints in rehab, and lived in an abusive marriage. She was hugely successful—selling over 55 million albums—but like every…
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Every Parent Should be a Conservative and a Liberal
My father calls himself a conservative. In 1964 he voted for Barry Goldwater, and these days his car sports a big blue bumper sticker: CAIN. He is a born-again Christian who believes in the Bible and doesn’t believe in evolution. He’s a teetotaler. But I have to say, at nearly 93 my father is also…
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The Queen’s Purse
Why does the Queen always carry that purse? A friend was telling me at brunch on Sunday that he and his wife had been honored, on a recent trip to London, to be welcomed to Buckingham Palace. They were part of a larger church group. Ken said the Queen came in and worked the…
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Praying for Victory
There’s been a good bit of praying in advance of this Super Bowl. In the play-off’s, Tim Tebow dropped to one knee and thanked God, dramatically, for every touchdown. Still, he didn’t make it to the big game. Then there is Tom Brady’s wife, Gisele Bundchen, the Brazilian supermodel who emailed family and friends this…
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“It’s Groundhog Day!”
(We’ll get to Gobbler’s Knob in a moment.) Today—February 2nd—is a big turning point. It’s a great cross-quarter day, midway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. In ancient, agricultural societies it was regarded as the beginning of spring—the time for first turning the soil in preparation for March planting. There were prayers and…
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To Love Your Dandelions
This morning before Centering Prayer, Pam and I read from The Gospel of Thomas, a book of the sayings of Jesus discovered in 1945 in a small desert cave near Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Some sound word-for-word like other sayings in the canonical Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Some sound totally different, and some sound,…
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The Invisible Gorilla
The essence of spirituality is seeing. The beginning assumption is: human beings are blind (read that dramatic story in John 9 of Jesus’ healing the man born blind!). We fail to see what’s right in front of us, which is why we keep making such deadly choices. It makes sense if you think, “Well…
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God is a Verb
In matters of faith, nouns rule. People talk about what they believe in, and you get a limp procession of nouns: peace, justice, love, the Bible, heaven, salvation. All powerful things, but not in the nominative form. To get at the power inherent in those things we have to find the verb. We’ve got to…
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The Platinum Rule
We all know the Golden Rule, but do you know the Platinum Rule? Golden is: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Platinum is: Do unto others as they would have you do unto them. My brother told me the other day he had left his briefcase in a London taxi—with…