Spirit Gives Birth To Spirit

  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...