My good friend and mentor, Charlie Kelley, passed away last week. I wrote about him in my last post knowing it was only a matter of days until he would move to his eternal home. And now, I no longer have a classic mentor…one who is one generation ahead of me, one who...
“I lift up my eyes to the hills…where does my help come from?” That wistful cry from the Hebrew Scriptures (Psalm 121:1) has always been so evocative for me. The author is scanning the horizon wondering if someone (God?) will ride down to render aid in their moment of...
“Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.” ― Abraham Lincoln Let’s shift from unmoored to anchored. For the past month I have been exploring the state of feeling unmoored, of discovering your foundations have eroded, of living with anomie. I...
It is what it is. Ugh…I can’t stand that phrase. Probably because it sounds too superficial to me. But as glib as it sounds, that expression does capture the shoulder-shrugging reality of the ambiguous losses we’re all facing these days. I’ve been thinking about the...
Photo by nikko macaspac on Unsplash One of my most cherished times of the day is in the early hours, just after waking up. I look forward to my boring, but comfortably same, breakfast of yogurt, granola and berries and maybe a homemade bran muffin (the best ever, with...
If you and I were to sit down for a cup of coffee, you’d probably not notice anything out of the ordinary about me. I’d come across as stable and fairly put together. And, largely, I am. Outwardly I’m settled, albeit subdued. But apparently my body has been keeping...
Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering ‘it will be happier’…Alfred Tennyson I’m straining to hear that whisper. It’s faint, but I think I hear it. Hope is never a luxury. It is essential. I shudder when I think that relief may be deferred much...
I’m on a bit of a roll talking about leadership. A calling that leads to some form or title of leadership has always fascinated me, and the development of leaders has always been a concern of mine. So, you can imagine how much I’ve been thinking about that topic...
There’s an old Quaker saying, “Let your life speak”. I first heard of it in Parker Palmer’s book of the same title. At first mysterious and enigmatic to me, over time it has become a large part of the process I coach people through as they seek to discover their...
Why isn’t God doing something about this mess we’re in? That is THE question. Isn’t it? Why doesn’t God heal the world from COVID? Why doesn’t he help mitigate the climate emergency? Why won’t he eradicate racism? Why isn’t he doing something about the tsunami of...
