Much to my family of origin’s dismay, sometimes my life is weird. And interesting. For example, earlier this year I had a chance to learn massage therapy from a crazy, old, hippy, Christian massage and hypnotherapist. He was a bit of a charlatan and con-artist, but a pretty sincere one. If you asked him, he would tell you the color of your aura, how many … Continue reading Much-Ado-About-Feelings
I have some argumentative children. Quarrelsome, you could say. Sometimes they will do something mind bogglingly absurd and then try to defend themselves by saying, “you never told me I couldn’t [paint the dog with gravy]/[microwave a stuffed animal]/[tell relatives how much I enjoy setting things on fire and seeing how long it takes for them to call you to express concern]/etc.” To which my … Continue reading “No Crapping in the Middle of the Living room!”
One of the frustrations of writing my poor, little blog is that sometimes I write something that I think could be really important to people and because of my tiny reach into the blogosphere, it passes by mostly unnoticed. A couple of weeks ago I wrote an essay on what I called New Fundamentalism which was one of those posts. See, over the years I … Continue reading Check this out!
As far as the east is from the west, I will remove your sins from you. – God That’s the offer of forgiveness we all want to take. But when it comes to forgiveness between us humans, as far as the east is from the west is a bit much to contemplate. God knows this. In fact, when the disciples were told that they had … Continue reading Stages of Forgiving
One of the modern criticisms of Christianity is that God seems different in the Old Testament than in the New. In the Old Testament, God is wrathful, commits genocide, is angry, etc, etc. Then in the New Testament he shows up and says, “love!” I have long held that it was the people who changed, not God. Maybe people were more civilized by the time … Continue reading An Argument In Support of an Angry God
Forgiveness is absolutely essential, but sometimes our hurts are just so big. Here are some steps I have found useful in getting to a point of forgiveness. 1. Be realistic about your pain and what it is you are forgiving. If you are angry, be angry. If you are hurt, be hurt. Don’t pretend it’s not as bad as it is. If you are destroyed, … Continue reading Steps to Forgiveness
1. “Lord, please make this idiot stop being a moron.” 2. “Lord, please help this person stop doing terrible things.” 3. “Lord, please turn this person’s heart towards you so he can change.” 4. “Lord, help me show this person your ways through how I deal with him.” 5. “Father, if it fits with your will, please bring a miracle to … Continue reading Ways To Pray For An Enemy
. At the very end of my book The Upside Down World – A Book of Wisdom in Progress, I have a section which I called “Quantum Christianity”. It consists of several pages of fairly random notes about a variety of subjects ranging from quantum physics to abortion. I don’t usually makes notes, but I do usually think about a variety of odd things. I … Continue reading I think about weird things
– Paul to the Phillipians Life is stressful. Remembering to pray is hard. So, some years ago, I read this verse and decided to kill 2 birds with one stone. From that point on, I decided, being anxious or worried would be the universe’s cue for me to check in with the divine (you know – pray). Sometimes the prayer was just a “hey – … Continue reading Anxiety -> Prayer -> Peace
Being forgiven = Freedom Forgiving = Freedom Pick a day this week to deliberately forgive anything and everything that bugs you. Traffic? “I forgive you idiots for being in my way. I forgive the morons who designed the road system while under the influence of socialist drug addicts during their brutalist period. I forgive my brakes for screetching.” (FYI – Name calling is tolerated, but … Continue reading Practice Forgiveness Day!
The Upside Down World 