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welcome friends, strangers, & wanderers

You found your way here - it's funny & fascinating how connections happen.  

• Perhaps you googled Remi Gaillard "how to really kick a soccer ball" & you ended up on this site.   
• Or you were searching for a Mary Oliver poem or a thought from Henri Nouwen & you clicked on over.

The above three names are the most viewed topics on my blog.  Ultimately though I post on people & movements that renew our world - how certain people & events underscore the vibrancy & the difficulty of deep faith - and why I believe our world can be transformed for great goodness.

• And if you'd like you are welcome to follow my posts by simply subscribing here.  Otherwise great goodness to you as you travel down that road.

Dying Under a Hard Sky (A Good Friday Reflection)

"I only got half my intestines." Renegade practically shouts while lifting his shirt revealing a snake-sized scar crawling up & over his gargantuan belly toward his chest. "Shot up in Nam. I was a machine gunner. When I eat I need to be close to a bathroom." He laughs loudly but suddenly stops & says, "That ain't funny." And then he smiles a wide toothless grin.

Renegade’s a big man with a big grey-white beard & a bigger belly tucked into a red flannel shirt. He has a big voice & in many ways he reminds me of the bear from the animated Jungle Book movie, Baloo, jolly & jovial most of the time but strong enough to protect himself from an onslaught of angry men.

Once in December while he was throwing a sign for money in downtown Monterey a little boy ran up to him and jumped in his lap. Without missing a beat Renegade told the earnest youngster, "Well son you know I'm off duty right now but I'll make an exception - but just this once. Now listen - if you do good in school & I'm tellin' you you gotta do your best. And you obey your ma & pop you'll get what's coming for Christmas - now tell me what it is you want." And the boy proceeded to tell Renegade all his Christmas wishes while a startled father relaxed at the incarnation of Santa right before his eyes.

For a few Sundays at our little 'inconsequential' homeless church on the beach Renegade hovers around sitting one picnic table away from where we read Scripture & pray for one another. He pretends not to listen. But I see him lean closer at times straining to hear what's being discussed while he sips a can of beer wrapped up in a brown paper bag. I think in some ways he believes he’s paying due respect by not 'attending' church while drinking.

"Me and God are straight. I ain't saying I'm perfect - I like my beer & I like to smoke my weed. He knows where I stand. And when I get up there,” he says pointing to the sky, “ain't no secrets gonna be between Him & me. Me & Him have a deal." Renegade repeats that refrain every time I see him. It seems to be a kind of testament to his honesty but one that betrays a hurricane of destruction churning & slashing the outer banks of his spirit.

(read the rest by clicking below)

 

Good Friday - Lenten Reflection (worth the repost)

Enjoy -

Learning vs. Education . . . (Clip of the Week)

Just saw this on heyamberrae's blog. Couldn't agree more with the sentiment behind this clip especially after listening about the application inflation report on NPR today. Oh the college bubble may need to be burst.

Let's Start a Learning Revolution from Skillshare on Vimeo.

The Aurora - by Terje Sorgjerd (Clip of the Week)

What an astounding capture of film - both meditative & expansive. You can check more of his work here.

 

 

The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Perfecting the Imperfect - (Excerpt of the Week)

Just received this in my inbox today & I do have to say that I wish more of us could have the courage to live as such

"We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.  That might just be the central message of how spiritual growth happens; yet nothing in us wants to believe it….

If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own.  What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble and earnest will find it!  A 'perfect' person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond imperfection.

It becomes sort of obvious once you say it out loud.  In fact, I would say that the demand for the perfect is the greatest enemy of the good.  Perfection is a mathematical or divine concept, goodness is a beautiful human concept that includes us all."

 

-Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

 

 

 

Image of the Displaced . . . (Photo of the Week)

I enjoy the big picture that boston.com publishes because it reports world events solely with images . . . This is a photo from Dan Kitwood on men from Ghana waiting for repatriation & passports in a UN refugee camp in Tunisia a few weeks ago.

Seismic Changes

These are rather dramatic vids of first-hand footage of the earth shifting during the 3/11 quake. Simply astonishing . . .

Voices that Change Us

You may or may not know that Saint Patrick was not an Irishman. In fact, he was a Brit (a Romano-Briton to be precise) & as a teenager he was captured by the Irish & enslaved. After six some odd years of slavery the young Patrick heard a voice telling him to walk to a port 200 miles away where he would discover a ship that would lead him home. Indeed, Patrick obeyed the instruction, discovered the ship, eventually returned to his freedom, his homeland, & his eventual calling into the ministry of the church. Years later - as legend has it - Patrick experienced a vision of a man carrying a number of letters & inscribed on the letter handed to him were the words, "the voice of the Irish." And while Patrick read the letter he imagined he heard a chorus of voices crying out to him, "We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us." So Patrick went to the land of his former captors & the rest so to speak is history - with a good bit of Irish legend thrown in.

Deep Love

"What can we say about God's love? We can say that God's love is unconditional. God does not say, 'I love you, if ...' There are no ifs in God's heart. God's love for us does not depend on what we do or say, on our looks or intelligence, on our success or popularity. God's love for us existed before we were born and will exist after we have died. God's love is from eternity to eternity and is not bound to any time-related events or circumstances. Does that mean that God does not care what we do or say? No, because God's love wouldn't be real if God didn't care. To love without condition does not mean to love without concern. God desires to enter into relationship with us and wants us to love God in return.

Let's dare to enter into an intimate relationship with God without fear, trusting that we will receive love and always more love."

 

-Henri Nouwen

Stop Burning People & Start Loving the Unlovely

"We operate with the assumption that giving people new ideas changes people.  It doesn’t.  Believing ideas is, in fact, a way of not having to change in any significant way, especially if you can argue about them.  Ideas become defenses.

 

you have the right words, you are considered an orthodox and law-abiding Christian.  We burned people at the stake for not having the right words, but never to my knowledge for failing to love or forgive, or to care for the poor.  Religion has had a love affair with words and correct ideas, whereas Jesus loved people, who are always imperfect.

You do not have to substantially change to think some new ideas.  You always have to change to love and forgive ordinary people.  We love any religion that asks us to change other people.  We avoid any religion that keeps telling us to change."

-Richard Rohr (adapted from How Men Change: A Thin Time)