What defines us? If it’s relationships, I am blessed. Is it how we spend our time or what we treasure? I think it must also be what grasps us and what we hold onto from learning along the way. That which we know truly, love deeply, strive to become, and are grateful for. Life is a journey and God is good.
Compassion fatigue is what my colleague calls it. He works at a large medical center, providing support for care providers. A healer’s healer. As such, he worries about compassion fatigue—a state that makes care givers less caring. That impacts the hospital’s mission. It’s not that they aren’t doing their jobs efficiently. It’s that they are … Continue reading The Cure for Compassion Fatigue
There is tremendous variety encompassed in the word “celebration”. The same word is used to describe saying Catholic mass, big, blow-out parties on New Year’s Eve, and even private times of remembrance, although most are communal to some degree. Most definitions of the word celebration also have in common a sense of deviation from the … Continue reading Celebrate
Death dumbfounds us. Which is odd, considering that we know it’s coming—all things die. Still, we are confounded, shaken, unnerved and bewildered by death. The unexpected death of a loved one can leave us literally dumb, stunned into silence. Tonight was my sister-in-law’s viewing or visitation, the precursor to an open-casket funeral that is still … Continue reading At the Heart of All Things
What is leadership? What makes a leader? Certainly, it is someone who can set the vision and communicate it, can set the tone, and who causes others to be willing to follow. It requires willingness to take on the role, and the work and trouble that can bring in balancing conflicting opinions and interests. It … Continue reading What is a Leader?
Our culture is extremely body conscious, with a rigid sense of what is right and wrong, as exemplified in the phrase “you can never be too thin or too rich.” In truth, we can be both, and the measure of too much is not a BMI or bank balance—it’s the obsession with either. That’s what … Continue reading Body Image and Imago Dei
Hunger, on its face, would seem one of the simplest of social evils to solve. Provide food. But the issue quickly becomes complicated by multiple factors and causes. At the intersection of gender equity, caring for the environment, economic development, and encouraging values in youth is a way to end hunger and food insecurity. What … Continue reading Change that Challenges Hunger
To see God. To connect people with God. To see the sacred and holy in our lives and in each other. To me, that is the essence of ministry. It can be carried out anywhere—and should. It can be carried out by anyone—and should. As a Christian, it is my baptismal call. As a Christian, … Continue reading Ministry
Are you socially poor or socially wealthy? For me, they were new terms, used by David Brooks in his April 18, 2018 column in the New York Times, “The Blindness of Social Wealth”. Social poverty is a lack of relationships that daily nourish us and can be relied on for help in an emergency. Brooks … Continue reading We are the 99.9%
What is it about music that speaks to our innermost selves? Why can it move us so compellingly; forcing our hands and bodies and feet into frantic motion or perhaps only silently stretching our souls? Did we learn it from the birds and animals and tumbling water? Or would it have arisen regardless from a … Continue reading Music: Culture, Communication and Common Cup
