When our spirit sags
“Life itself has no meaning,” Joseph Campbell wrote. “However, each of us has meaning, and we bring it to life.” I like the paradigm shift here: meaning moves from the outside to the inside. It’s just that sometimes, we lose…
A song that saves people
In the movie Walk the Line, Johnny Cash auditions for Sam Phillips. He is hoping for a record deal. He is playing an uninspired and insipid version of a gospel hymn. And Phillips tells him no. When Cash demands a reason, Phillips says, "Because I don't believe you."…
Reconnect with our heart
This is a story about what can happen when we are not at home in our own skin. This is a story about reconnecting with our heart. And the choices we can make that spill to those around us. Carlton Pearson is…
The art of making fire
A long time ago, there was a man who invented the art of making fire. He took his tools and visited a tribe in the north, where the climate was bitter cold. The man taught the people how to make fire. And the…
Just to boogie
I was born and raised Baptist. The kind of Baptist that flinches when the words ritual or sacrament are mentioned, tainted as they were, by profane Catholicism. (But then again, we didn’t know what the words meant, only that anything…
Where is your sacred place?
It's déjà vu all over again. I just came in from watching the sunset. I'm in Englewood Beach (on Florida's west coast on Manasota Key), where I return every May to spend a few days with some old friends. It's a ritual. And…
Your name and wardrobe
A Nigerian woman, a physician at a teaching hospital in the United States, attended a Gordon MacDonald lecture. After, she approached Gordon, to offer kind words of affirmation. She introduced herself using an American name. "If I may ask," Gordon inquired, "what's your African name?" The woman…
The artist inside
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson began her career as an accomplished viola player. While on tour in Europe (in the late 1980s), her viola was stolen. She could have replaced it. As would be imagined, the theft threw her into a state of feeling lost…
Give me the diamond!
The sannyasi (a Hindu holy man) had reached the outskirts of the village and settled down under a tree for the night when a villager came running up to him and said, "The stone! The stone! Give me the precious stone!" "What stone?" asked the sannyasi. "Last night the Lord Shiva appeared to…
Living Wholehearted
Walking the beach one day, Gunilla Norris sees a young child run---determined on very unsteady legs---into the water. The toddler’s intensity is palpable. The mother sits some distance away, outwardly comfortable enough about her child's safety not to interfere with his adventure. With a wet sagging diaper, the young boy runs into the water with the half-weaving, half-stumbling motion of toddlers who have just…
