Tall Monastic Guy

Some highlights of our recent brief trip to visit my brother in Charleston, SC...

JP's first exposure to the Atlantic and a visit to the nations (supposed) oldest tree. In the picture with all the shovels, the Taylor's are creating the now, wildly popular beach game, "Holes 150."

Good times.

Washington Post- "The High Cost of Poverty"

Excellent article out of the Washington Post

"The poor pay more for a gallon of milk; they pay more on a capital basis for inferior housing," says Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). "The poor and 100 million who are struggling for the middle class actually end up paying more for transportation, for housing, for health care, for mortgages. They get steered to subprime lending. . . . The poor pay more for things middle-class America takes for granted."

Read entire article HERE

Magnificent

Just another Saturday morning for our good friend's Vic, Sarah, Sam, & Em Merchant... This is like poetry and makes me smile every time I watch, so hopefully it does the same for you. Our friend, Caleb Seeling, was inspired by the video to write this article on parenting.

Notes from 5/15 presentation by author, Wm. Paul Young

Last night I slipped in to Abiding Hope Lutheran Church to listen to a presentation by author of The Shack, W. Paul Young. In short, I really enjoyed him. The following is what I jotted down from the Q & A session (which was the majority of his presentation). Much of my notes are my closest interpretation of his responses with his exact words in quotes. 

Q: “Why are relationships so hard?” 

Religion is a lot easier than relationship. All you need in order to keep religion going is a bunch of rules, but when you enter relationship you’ve entered mystery and you’ve given up control. For most Christians God has been more like Santa (You better watch out you better not cry he’s gonna find out who’s been naughty or nice…) and it’s been about our performance, our trying to please God... essentially a self-centered religion.

The other version centers on God and trusting in God’s character. We are so geared toward hierarchy within relationships and we assume that hierarchy exists within the Trinity. Hierarchical relationships let you know who’s in charge, who’s in control which is why we so quickly gravitate toward hierarchy.

God is fundamentally in relationship. He’s never done anything alone. Independence is such a foreign thing to God.

struggling with spiritual maturity

"America may possess the world's largest infrastructure for nurturing human spirituality, complete with hundreds of thousands of houses of worship, thousands of parachurch organizations and schools, and seemingly unlimited products, resources and experts.

Yet, a new study from Barna Group identifies an underlying reason why there is little progress in helping people develop spiritually: many churchgoers and clergy struggle to articulate a basic understanding of spiritual maturity. People aspire to be spiritually mature, but they don't know what it means." 

Read entire article: Many Churchgoers and Faith Leaders Struggle to Define Spiritual Maturity

believing or knowing?

Every other Thursday evening at Pearl Street Grill I spend a couple hours with three friends in a discussion revolving around each other’s life story. We’ve been on this discussion since the beginning of this year in which each individual takes a couple weeks to tell their story in its entirety. This past Thursday we discussed how we’d like our story to be told differently five years from now. In other words, what are some aspects of our character and current perspective that we’d prefer to be tweaked and re-aligned in the next five years? Interestingly, for all of us it came down to two things: Knowing God is good and a deeper knowledge of his love for us.

Another key chapter I recently read in The Shack gets at the heart of our longing in the following pivotal interaction between the characters of Mack and Jesus...