Here are my blog posts. I previously posted them on Obsidian but I’m moving them (slowly) to this website. It will take time. I’m also going to be publishing new pages as often as they come to mind.
Number of posts: 71
It was a beautiful winter night to take our dog out for a walk. Looking toward the west I saw the planetary alignment my wife had told me about earlier that day. I immediately pulled out my phone to capture a picture. But, the picture didn’t look just right. So, I opened a browser window to see what settings to adjust for night shots. I must have messed with my phone settings for ten minutes before the ridiculousness of the situation dawned on me.
Read more...What would your belief system - your religion and politics, for example - have to do to cause you to reject it? It’s a question for our ideology-driven times.
Decades ago I believed in almost every facet of the Christian Nationalist dream, including their beliefs about sexuality. I ignored the human experience, following ideology instead. Then, as a chaplain in training, I sat by a gay man who lost his partner moments before. His racking sobs revealed his overwhelming grief. Wait, I thought. He really loved his partner. This relationship wasn’t the perversion I was told it was. There was more love in that room than in my own “straight” marriage. It was love. Pure love. It was the beginning of the collapse of my walls of belief about human sexuality. My former beliefs still cast long shadows.
Read more...Many years ago, I worked in a little religious school. One of the children could barely speak. She had many siblings. She came to school with bruises. One day she accidentally fell out of the car. I told the principal that we should report the situation. I was told that it wasn’t our business and that reporting them to government authorities wasn’t right. I still anonymously reported them. My employment ended soon thereafter. I guess suspicion that I had called Child Protective Services was enough.
Read more...Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.
When someone says, Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back they are upping the value of their promise. They are saying, You have nothing to lose.
But, even if you are able to get your money back, you’ve still lost something: time and trust. Broken trust steadily erodes our lives and connections. The return of our money can’t return the time and hope for a resolution to our problem.
Read more...My phone’s keyboard consistently turns “and” into “abs” when I swipe-type, an algorithm error that happens dozens of times weekly. Despite how frequently I use “and” versus how rarely anyone types “abs,” the code refuses to learn my patterns.
We operate on similar faulty algorithms. When our partner raises a concern, our mental predictive text instantly jumps to defensiveness, hearing criticism when they’re offering connection. Like my stubborn keyboard, we’ve been programmed by past experiences to misinterpret what’s actually being said.
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