Posts – Page 3 – Deepening Our Journey

Boxing

November 3, 2024

When we hear the word stereotyping used today it’s usually and accurately referring to putting another person or persons in a category with negative and harmful consequences for them. In this post, I want to reflect on what happens to us when we initiate or participate in that type of behavior. Reflecting back on myself as a child growing up in a small town in Schuylkill County, I have come to realize how much stereotyping actually took place. Just to name a few, persons of color, members of various ethnic

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In Search of Happiness

October 12, 2024

Before I get to this month’s post, I would like to express my gratitude that it even exists! After several weeks of struggling with various major life changes and challenges, I had decided I was too tired and overwhelmed to write a post this month. Then I received messages—one from my childhood friend Dave and the other from a newer acquaintance named Tracey—thanking me for the blog and urging me to “keep up the good work.” Those two notes unknowingly motivated me to rethink my decision! Could it be that

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The Gift of Forgiveness

September 2, 2024

I seldom hear anyone mention the word ‘forgive’ in conversation and that includes myself. I do repeat it several times during weekly worship, including the Lord’s Prayer, but honestly do not give thought to what I am saying. Choosing to forgive someone is often difficult, challenging, and complicated. We may not want to forgive for a number of reasons. We might withhold forgiveness because it gives us control over the person or persons who caused the hurt. We may feel that forgiving implies that what was done was okay, that

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A Journey Through Stuff

August 7, 2024

That one word—stuff—has shown up in my conversations with a wide variety of folks more in the last few months than it has in many years! For the most part it held a negative and burdensome connotation, not something we wanted more of, but something we wanted to be free from. As you might know from past posts, Rita and I have been struggling to downsize as we prepare to put our home on the market and move into a continuing care community. When we received notice from Willow Valley

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Life’s Crap

June 2, 2024

None of us gets through life without encountering our share of hardship, adversity, pain, frustration, loss, and a whole bunch of other crap that we’d prefer to avoid. In fact, sometimes it can feel like life is nothing but crap! Before we go any further, this is probably a good spot to put something on “the table” that has been showing up in feedback from time to time. On occasion a few followers of my blog have politely shared that they find some of my references, adjectives, etc. a bit

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Little Bigs – Part 2

May 4, 2024

This is the second in a two-part post on what I call, “little bigs,” small things we can do to possibly help create some degree of understanding and healing in what I see as an increasingly divisive, antagonistic, and fear-driven climate. Your feedback on the first post about taking time to thank folks for a wide variety of services and small acts of kindness was overwhelming, refreshing, and empowering. Thanks! For those of you who have been following my blog over the years, you may remember a post I wrote

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Little Bigs – Part 1

March 31, 2024

As I have mentioned in prior posts, this is the most divisive, antagonistic and fear-driven climate I have experienced in my lifetime, and as a result, I have become increasingly more committed to identifying common opportunities for connecting and healing. I call these “little bigs” because they take little effort but can have outsized results on everyone involved. One of my “go-to” little bigs is thanking folks! It is clearly an effective and low-risk strategy for connecting with folks. I’ve long been trying to make a habit of affirming any

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Still Chewing

February 27, 2024

Over the past few years, I have had the privilege of sitting with several people who have been given a terminal illness diagnosis as they grapple with how to deal with this shocking and overwhelming news. On occasion they may ask for my thoughts or professional advice, but for the most part, they are hoping for someone to sit with them, listen carefully, pass no judgement, and at times hold their hand. Some choose as much medication as is allowable and basically remove themselves to the furthest extent possible from

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Our Shrinking World

February 1, 2024

“As you age, your world gets smaller and smaller.” This dire pronouncement from our neighbor, our boy’s self-designated adoptive grandmother, haunted me from the moment I heard it. Over the years Rita and I reflected on it often, even more frequently as we entered our own post-retirement phase. Already we had experienced the loss of several close friends, and now as we faced a move to an over 55 retirement community many miles from our home, we would be cut off from the daily interactions with everyone we had grown

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