Spirit Gives Birth To Spirit

     I was talking with my wife's father, a retired pastor, and he told me about an image he used in many of his sermons throughout the years.  It is a thing that every kid learns on the monkey bars on the playground at school.  It is simply this: when you are on the monkey bars, you can't move forward until you let the hand behind you let go of the last bar.      In this way, I am kind of stuck in my life.  The trailing monkey bar is my smoking cigarettes.  I just haven't been able to let go of that bar no matter how hard I try.  I believe that this bar gives me a lift.  You see, I suffer from a chronic depression.  When I go outside and have a smoke and a caffeinated beverage, I get a little boost to my mood.  Often this gets me back on track and I start doing things besides laying in bed.  I might do the dishes and I feel better about what I have accomplished.  I might, being awake ...

     It is two days before Christmas.  The first Christmas with my three month old daughter and my beautiful wife of three years.  I am sitting outside in the cold New Hampshire evening in a red metal chair.  It is one of those old chairs from decades ago with peeling red paint and a scallop on the back.  I am smoking my e-cigarette and drinking a giant glass of Pepsi.  The chair belonged to Mr. Smith, who I never knew.  He was a kind old man that lived until he was in his early nineties who lived next door to my wife and her family when she was not even a teenager.  I am sitting outside my wife's mom and dad's house in the cold New Hampshire dusk, watching the Christmas lights slowly turn on, one house at a time, down the suburban New Hampshire street.  And I am thinking about Mr. Smith.  He sat in this chair 8-12 times a day just like I do, and smoked his pipe.      Art was his first name....

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     I have a theory about the afterlife.  When your body begins shutting down, certain systems in the brain start going offline.  There are circuits that allow us to perceive the passage of time.  I believe that these circuits start going off line before major life-sustaining functions do.  If you think of it, our perception of time is a fragile system at best when we're conscious. We need clocks to tell us how much time has passed. Even "reality" has a fragile relationship with time.  If you take two clocks and put one on the earth and another on a plane travelling twice the speed of sound, the two clocks will show different times. Astronauts on the International Space station age slightly slower than people on Earth.  This fragile system falls apart when we are in the process of dying. So we, at the instant of death (or rather the very fast progression of the shutting down of systems in our body) lose t...

     If Heaven and Hell are eternal, what makes you think they would skip the present moment?  Where are you right now? I just came from Heaven a few minutes ago.  I was in my 7 week old daughter's new nursery.  My wife of 3 years was sitting in the rocker.  We put Delia in her little portable crib.  My wife had the Lullaby album she made a few years ago playing in the background.  Listening to my wife's beautiful voice singing lullabies, Delia drifted off to sleep.  I left and went up to the gas station and had a smoke.  While I was there, I thought this thought: Heaven and Hell are all around us at every moment.  I just left Heaven by choice.      When I was a younger Christian I was inundated by the view that Heaven was just somewhere you go when you die. After 20 years of reading scripture and attending church, I am less convinced.  Sure, I believe there is some sort of afterlife.  I really don'...

     I am going to delve into some metaphysics to make a point.  "I exist" and "nobody cares" are two opposite poles on a filament that determines human "being." If someone proclaims "I exist!" and they come believe nobody cares, then they will in fact, cease to exist.  I am not speaking metaphorically.  They will literally die either by their own hand or by through a painful and sometimes slow process of self neglect.  Every human being is at some point on this continuum at this very moment.  Every human being that has ever lived, too, falls on this continuum.  If one person remembers in some way that a person lived at some point in history, then that person existed.  If no one remembers, it is as if they never did. If nobody cares, it doesn't matter that a person existed (past tense) - because they have ceased to be.      Reach out to other people.  You may be the only reason someone is h...

     I have often thought that I am a bit like Frodo Baggins at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings. Young Frodo has lived his whole life in the Shire.  It is an idyllic place full of bright green grass, cozy houses, families and friends.  He is comfortable there, and does not have any desire to leave for the greater world beyond the Shire.  But still he dreams of adventure.  It does not occur to him that this adventure is to be found beyond the boundaries of his comfort.  The comfort of home trumps his wanderlust.  The world outside the Shire is the scary unknown. One day, he is visited by an old friend, Gandalf the Grey, who has something of a gift for him.  It small, unassuming ring.  This small ring is a powerful and ancient object that will change his life forever.  It will, in fact, change the entire world as he follows it into a great battle between good and evil for the fate of all of Middl...

     I love being a father.  Our baby, Delia Simone Fant, was born four weeks ago.  These four weeks have been magical.  And I have learned so much about her, about my wife Aynsley, and about myself.  You see, before Delia was born, I never gave my wife enough credit.  She was always taking over-the-counter medications for the slightest stiffly nose or pain in some part of her body. I always said she missed her calling and should be a pharmacist. I was really worried she wouldn't be able to handle the pain and have the endurance for labor.  How wrong I was.  She was such a trooper.  And I grew so much closer to her helping her through it.  Late in the evening she had begun having slight contractions.  They progressed, getting more intense by 11:00 pm.  She labored alone for a while and then woke me up at 2:00 am.  We decided to go to the hospital.  She was really tired and the nurses said ...

     I know this sounds judgmental  but it needs to be said.  Donald Trump is not a Christian.  Or if he is a Christian, then clearly, I would want to call myself something different.  Why do I even take him seriously when he makes this claim?  It is because thousands upon thousands of Christians believe him.  So clearly, the term Christian has come to mean, for many people, something other than what it meant in the Gospels.      "Christian" in the gospels was used a handful of times and in those few references, there are two words that are commonly translated "Christian."  One is synonymous with "disciple" and the other is "Nazarene." The first place it appears is in Acts 11:26, where the author calls those who were disciples of Jesus "Christians." Acts 11 mentions specifically that the disciples of Jesus were called Christians first at the church in Antioch. What did it mean to be a disciple ...

  You are about twelve years old now.  I got you from the pound when you were two.  I don't actually know how old you are or when your birthday is because they just estimated by your teeth that you were about two years old.  I was such a lonely bachelor and I had a hard night.  I made up my mind to go to the pound and just look at the dogs the next morning.  When I pulled up, I saw you right away in your outdoor pen.  Without a second thought, I said to myself, this is my dog. You were so beautiful, with your brown short hair and your black Shepard muzzle and pointy dingo ears. I came in and took you for a walk.  You were just so happy to get out of that little 10x10 pen.  I took you home to my little apartment and made your birthday my birthday and we have celebrated them together all these years.  You were just happy to get a pig ear on your birthday.  I was so thankful every year on my birthday for your companionship.  ...

     My wife and I are home from the hospital again this week. This time with my baby girl in tow. She was born exactly a week ago and we came home on Monday. It is Saturday and I am sitting up in bed while my wife slumbers next to me. And next to her, in the bassinet, is my beautiful daughter.      I sit here watching the curtains move as the cool air from the air conditioner runs up them and out into the room. I am fretting about if I turned the temperature down 1 degree too much and Delia will wake up. Then she'll need to be fed by my wife, who really needs the sleep.  The air just shut off and Delia isn't stirring so I can relax.      Her name is Delia Simone Fant. Her first name is Greek and it means a resident of the isle of Delos. Simone is Hebrew and it means "she hears God and God hears her." So you see, she already knows more Greek and Hebrew than I learned in seminary.    ...

     I have a problem.  It is a problem that has dogged me for 36 years. Since I was about 5 years old. I have low self-esteem.  I was not born with this; I learned it.  It comes from a perfectionism and perceived failures at being perfect.  It is a vicious cycle that leads to an ever deepening sense of failure culminating in increasing erosion of self concept. It all started when I was 5 and 6 years old when my father left my family.  I say left my family, but he was really just leaving my mother.  But I didn't perceive it that way in my 5-year-old mind.  One of my earliest memories was my father leaving.  I wanted to help him carry his stuff out to the car and I dropped his shaving cream.  It exploded and he reacted to it.  I felt like it was my fault - the shaving cream and the leaving. After he left, at 5 years old, I regressed to wetting my bed and pooping my pants.  This ...

     I have a problem.  It is a problem that has dogged me for 36 years. Since I was about 5 years old. I have low self-esteem.  I was not born with this; I learned it.  It comes from a perfectionism and perceived failures at being perfect.  It is a vicious cycle that leads to an ever deepening sense of failure culminating in increasing erosion of self concept. It all started when I was 5 and 6 years old when my father left my family.  I say left my family, but he was really just leaving my mother.  But I didn't perceive it that way in my 5-year-old mind.  One of my earliest memories was my father leaving.  I wanted to help him carry his stuff out to the car and I dropped his shaving cream.  It exploded and he reacted to it.  I felt like it was my fault - the shaving cream and the leaving. After he left, at 5 years old, I reverted to wetting my bed and pooping my pants.  This i...

     I have been perplexed.  From the rise of Donald Trump to the exit of Great Britain from the European Union.  I did not see the connection in it and the many other events and conflict I saw in the world over the past year or two.  The rise of the ultra-right across the world over the increasingly loud protests of those who counter it. I saw the way people I know and love fell in line, grudgingly, behind Donald Trump. Trump, I believe, is quite possibly the most divisive and dangerous political candidate in recent history. I simply could not explain what was going on here or in Europe. Then I read a scholarly article on Nationalism vs Globalism.  It said that these events were coming from a divide that was growing in the world: Nationalism vs. Globalism. The Nationalists are people who are fiercely loyal to their country and they feel their way of life is being threatened.  Their way of life and values are threatened by the homo...

     It is impossible to help someone who doesn't think they need or doesn't want help.  It can be a frustrating thing if you love them, because most of us can't see past our own issues.  Our issues, and outlook because of them, traps us in a world view that we cannot easily see through.  It usually takes someone else who we have a relationship with to say something that shatters the barriers we have constructed.  It shatters through the lens through which we look at the world.  But most of us are under the extremely destructive and insulating belief that we can take care of ourselves.  We believe we are self sufficient. Reaching out is a sign of weakness.  But the truth is the opposite.  We are relational creatures.  We need others and reaching out is a sign of strength, and it enables those people who are sitting on the fringes of our lives to stop being silent and provide help.  Because a broken and cont...

     No man or woman alone can save our country. No group of people can, in themselves. The devices of men, as well-intentioned as they may be, cannot turn this nation or this world around. It is the physical law of Entropy - all systems naturally progress from order to disorder when not acted on by something outside the system. Man is part of the system, and however he may try, without some external influence, he is simply contributing to the decay. Only some force outside the system can order it and save it. In the founding of this country, some men looked to God as they understood him to inspire them to develop the inalienable rights and principles that would underlie our democracy. But anyone can turn to God and still inflict harm on the world. Extremism, case and point. Because for man's rational mind, God is what we make of him in our intellect.  Don't we all assign our own characteristics to God, projecting our flawed and perverse human desires on him? G...