Category: Life

So, this may be falling under the rubric of “too soon”, but I’ve been doing some thinking from a behavioral theological perspective on Clinton’s electoral loss. Two things: first, I write this as someone who voted for Clinton and am extremely troubled by the specter of a Trump presidency; second, by framing this as “Clinton’s…
Read more

Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. Sandra Bland. Freddy Gray. Michael Brown. And so many more black people have been killed in encounters with police in America the last two years. Right now we are rightly talking about racial bias: implicit, learned biases that affect our understanding, perceptions, and actions below the level of our conscious awareness. Given…
Read more

Two friends from seminary recently shared an incredibly beautiful story about their family. I didn’t know Mac and Katy that well in seminary- they were seniors when I was just starting. I remember Mac the best. He was tall and had this huge, beautiful mane of long, blond hair. Their family now lives in Raleigh,…
Read more

I was once told by someone I greatly respect that I should consider not being quite so vulnerable in the pulpit. He was genuinely concerned for me, saying that down deep people really want their leaders to appear strong and project a sense of certainty and confidence. Although he didn’t use these exact words I…
Read more

STONE(Thobar Phádraig)The face in the stone is a mirror looking into you.You have gazed into the moving waters,you have seen the slow light, in the skyabove Lough Inagh, beneath you, streams have flowed,and rivers of earth have moved beneath your feet,but you have never looked into the immovabilityof stone like this, the way it holds…
Read more

SOMETIMESSometimesif you move carefullythrough the forest, breathinglike the onesin the old stories, who could crossa shimmering bed of leaveswithout a sound, you cometo a placewhose only task is to trouble youwith tinybut frightening requests, conceived out of nowherebut in this placebeginning to lead everywhere. Requests to stop whatyou are doing right now,and to stop what youare becomingwhile you do it, questionsthat can makeor…
Read more

When we aren’t satisfied with how things are going in your organization of life, one of the most powerful questions to ask, according to poet David Whyte, is how do we stop having the conversations we’ve been having? How do we just stop having the conversations we’re having that aren’t serving us well? When we pay…
Read more

An Irish poet walks into a corporate boardroom… Sounds like the set up to a bad joke, doesn’t it? Only, boardrooms all over organizational life have been where poet David Whyte has spent a great deal of his life. Whyte, an associate faculty member at Oxford’s Saïd School of Business, has consulted with giants like…
Read more

This weekend I’m leading an adult education class at another church about predictable irrationality and politics. I agreed to do this class months ago. When I got back in touch with the guy who extended the invitation, I was like: “Well, I’m happy to come if you still want me…but this election season is so…
Read more