On yesterday’s episode of #OffTheHighway, Dr. Randy Woodley shared a couple of thoughts on why, perhaps, many of us do not tangibly experience God. It is a thought-provoking 3 minutes that you can check out here. Dr. Woodley states that we have made the Creation to be unnatural and the unnatural (human-manufactured) world to be […]
On today’s episode of “Off the Highway”, Paul Young, author of “Cross Roads” and “The Shack” takes a few minutes to unpack a label that he is often accused of, at least some people treat it like an accusation. And let me add, as Paul does in the video, we use accusations and labels to […]
Setting: The Albina Press Coffee House Coffee: Stumptown Guatemala Finca el Injerto Sound: Penny and Sparrow’s “Struggle Pretty” View: This neighborhood mural…. “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle” -St. Francis Last evening during our Advent ceremony we were discussing the candles. Our candles dance around one another […]
Happy second week of Advent. Last night, around the dining room table, house aglow with Christmas lights, we lit the Peace Candle together with our boyz and some of out close friends. It was a lovely ceremony. The very essence of nativity peace is the belief in Immanuel which simply means “God with us.” In […]
Happy December. Blessed Advent. Well, it is another monday morning. I am back at my favorite table in my local bagel shop. I have my coffee in my grumpy-man-face mug. I am sitting on my sparkly gold, 50’s style vinyl booth. It is a cold morning here in Portland. Walking here, I found myself noticing all […]
(This is a guest post from my dear friend, Micky Jones. Please read and consider adding these mediations to your Advent.) Dear Friends, Advent is a time when sentimentality and spiritualization reigns. But, in more ancient forms of Christianity, Advent was more a season of penitence, not unlike Lent. Today, that call for repentance includes […]
Just published in Christianity Today/Leadership Journal is a new article that explores the “Biblical” gospel-proclaimed. So often, when discussing the message of the gospel, Christians rely upon passages from the letters of the Apostle Paul (or others) and yet these letters are not even examples of Christians talking to non-Christians, they are instead Christians talking […]
Every family has its weirdos. For some it is Aunt Trudy (the cat-lady), Cousin Sarah (who still can’t hold down a job), or maybe Uncle Chet, who always, always speaks his mind—whether his thoughts have anything to do with the occasion at hand … or not. We try not to exclude these characters from family gatherings, but sometimes we […]
What am I to do with my Albanian grandmother? What am I to believe regarding my wise and spiritually insightful (even faith-filled) agnostic neighbor or my lovely Buddhist housemate or the tipsy advisor sitting next to me at the local pub?
This week, I asked the question, “What did it look like for Jesus to engage the “other”? Here is a summarized list of my many observations. Most every bullet point is a personal parable. May I be a hyper-local and global neighbor.
