My language has evolved significantly. I find myself being unwilling to use words that were common to me because of the connotations that I have become aware of. So much of life is language and as I understand more, I find myself less and less comfortable with specific ideas that we have coined phrases for. …
I like to debate. The practice of rhetoric and logic is something that I value highly and it’s something I want to continue to grow my skills in. Naturally, especially these days, the spectrum of participants is wide. Because of sites like Facebook, what was once saved for Mars Hill (the literal place in Athens …
My life is like a scavenger hunt. I’m constantly searching and trying to understand the world and my place in it. I’m pulled into mystery and beauty as I work my way through different realizations and epiphanies that are clues for what is next. David Dark for me is like someone who is ahead of …
Life’s Too Short To Pretend You’re Not Religious Read More »
This is a topic that has been bubbling back up among some of my friends lately. As I mentioned a few days ago, there is an abandoning of the common practices and beliefs of some of my friends, and it’s resulting in an abandonment of the Christian label. I am taking a different approach. I’ve …
There was complaints about Mike Bradley (Sarnia’s mayor) conduct from the staff he works with. An integrity commissioner was hired for approx $60,000. The report was not very becoming of the mayor and it recommended docking pay. Mayor Mike then publishes a letter. Here he states that the integrity commissioner’s report was unfair, unnecessary and unhelpful. …
Photo Credit: Ziggy Marley Album Cover When you look at western society (especially white, middle class society), what are the things that people have ‘given themselves to’ that as a result infuses their life with meaning? I see three primary ones: religion/faith, jobs/careers and family. Some of us are invested in all three at once, some …
Religion Is A Step In Consciousness And Needs To Submit To Greater Things Read More »
The more you think about it, black and white dichotomies of who we believe ourselves to be, or who we believe others to be, make no sense. We are all familiar with the ‘why’ exercise; that when you ask why something is the case long enough to each answer that you eventually end in an …
Tonight we are here and we are uneasy. We are sad. We mourn the condition of the world. I wrote this prayer with a heavy heart and longing to comfort and show compassion to those with the burden of unbearable pain because of the Orlando shooting and read this at the vigil in Sarnia, Ontario. …
A Prayer For Orlando And LGBTQ People Everywhere Read More »
The Enneagram test is a personality test of sorts that is much more exhaustive I have found than the Myers Briggs. The descriptions are based on spectrum that also help understand health and unhealthy rhythms that folks get caught in based on their personality. Richard Rohr recently tackled the nine personality types but from a perspective of spirituality …
I’ve been toying with nihilism quite a bit as of late. Ecclesiastes’ author has become my friend. I start with everything is meaningless and then build from there my own sets of meaning that I hold to by faith. This can be freeing, but at the same time isolating. What is more lonely than only …
On Despair and Depression Being A Disease Of Certainty Read More »
Yesterday I explored this idea that a feeler that vents (in the thinker/feeler spectrum) is attempting to cope using thinking language. Though, I’m pretty far on the thinker side of this spectrum so I was trying to figure out what the equivalent style of venting is for me. Venting has never been a helpful tool …
Thinking and Emotions are two different languages that humans speak. We all speak both, but some of us are much more fluent in one over the other. I am quite fluent in thinking, but emotions I’m not as good at. I don’t experience them as strongly, I don’t understand others as well, so I …
Venting Is Emotional Release That Needs A Disclaimer Read More »
An unfortunate part of our society is that those focused on balancing budgets end up deflating imagination, robbing us of community and narrowing our values to being primarily economic in nature. We are seeing the consequences of this now where our “responsible” leaders and trustees are making decisions on behalf of our community to possibly …
Empathy is a way of seeing the world and the people in it. Empathy I think is a way that our hearts are bent in order to better be people of love. It’s a way in which we can see people in all the beauty of their humanity, for what they were created to be. …
Darryl Silvestri wrote this to me a few months ago in an attempt to explain vulnerability in a relationship. I want you to imagine you are playing the egg toss game. This is love. You stand across from you partner right up close and you gently hand the egg over to her. And she pauses …
Vulnerability: A Parable on Giving and Receiving Read More »
Why do pastors so often treat congregations with the impatience and violence of developers building a shopping mall instead of the patient devotion of a farmer cultivating a field? The shopping mall will be abandoned in disrepair in fifty years; the field will be healthy and productive for another thousand if its mysteries are respected by …
I am not much of an artist in the traditional sense. I can’t draw, paint, sing, play or perform. I lean to the analytical side of the spectrum and spend a good amount of time reading and thinking. As I start to understand religion, faith, philosophy and those sorts of things, I’ve begun to see …
A poem I wrote the night before she died. Below is a prayer and eulogy I wrote for the funeral today. Here is the MP3 file for the entire funeral. Sadness strikes the heart of many When a face that once forced dimples to grow into crevices Grows weary and broken And a voice that …
Naivety allows one to face into fate Each day comes and goes Why accept what you know to be true? Might as well believe in something else Peace comes through ignorance Each day comes and goes Anxiety comes through knowing That the unavoidable hasn’t happened yet Innocence precludes endings Each day comes and goes Soon …
Dave, a friend of mine, responded to me about my post on Men’s Vulnerability Group and I thought it was worth re-posting some of it. I have begun to realize and set aside all forms of asserting self-knowledge upon worlds that matter and have begun a journey of vulnerability that is characterized by receptivity and …