The Unclad Soul

I have been fascinated with medicine since I was a boy. Somewhere along the path of middle school, I thought I might be a doctor. As a kid, I got a toy doctor’s kit one Christmas and everyone in the family was targets of my doctoring. Though, as I remember it, I think my brother Terry was the only one who actually tolerated being one of my patients. Later, in high school, I figured I wasn’t smart enough to be a doctor after all. I wasn’t any good at math or science. But as long as I can remember I wanted to help people. My grandparents were a big part of our family life. And they were a huge influence on how I saw the world. Loving, gentle, caring, I learned from them a deep compassion for others. And as they got older, I felt such tenderness for them and the increasing limits of their bodies and minds. I eventually decided to go into the ministry. And there is certainly an aspect of healing in that if one takes it seriously and is dedicated to it. I enjoyed the compassionate...

I wonder now, in these agitated, often berserk times, if we have lost something precious in ourselves. Maybe we never had it. Maybe I have an image of our humanness in my mind that does not exist outside my mind. If so, then where did I get the idea that we are mostly good, and kind, and know how to behave in decent ways? I got it from people in my life who demonstrated those beautiful characteristics to me. Real people. Family. Teachers. Neighbors. Coaches. Friends. I know we can be caring people because I still see people caring all the time. And because I want to be caring, too. Where does that come from if we are basically just selfish, coarse, vulgar people? Who in our culture today champions good manners, courtesy, appropriateness? Where are we to look for people who value intelligence, learning, curiosity; who demonstrate kindness and generosity? It was blistering hot this past weekend. I was running errands and saw an elderly woman walking on the sidewalk. She was ...

The remarkable Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, once wrote, “This hasn’t been the age for the righteous and the decent.  I know what it means to beget monsters  And to recognize in them myself.”  It is an appropriate indictment of our own day and of our own selves. I keep telling myself that what we are experiencing in our country is just a phase, something we have gone through before, where people who turn loathsome and violent, enormously greedy and arrogant, will change. That these dark clouds of hostility hovering over us will pass and the sunlight of decent behavior will shine again. But there is something alarmingly stubborn about the indignity, prejudice, violence, division and hatred among us. We seem stuck in a continuous atmosphere of rancor and bitter estrangement. And it is disturbing and frightening that our leaders seem incapable or not interested in changing the nation’s oppressive mood. Our media, in all of its forms, is clearly geared t...

In the Netflix series, “Jack Taylor,” ex-cop Jack Taylor is a rebellious, hard drinking, scruffy guy who plays by his own rules, which are often questionable. Although he’s no longer a police officer, fired for unruly conduct, he still stumbles into situations where people need and want his help with some crime that’s been committed. He doesn’t always solve them, and he leaves plenty of debris along the way. He has a tough, rugged presence. And he’s a mess of a person. But inside the man, there beats a true heart for humanity. He lives in Mrs. Bailey’s Bed and Breakfast. It’s a lovely place that you would not expect to see the likes of Jack Taylor. But Mrs. Bailey took Jack in when he was disgracefully dismissed from the police force. He loved being a cop/detective. He fought for the underdog and the forgotten and the cheated. And the loss of his job sent him spiraling into a drunken bewilderment. He had no income but at Mrs. Bailey’s he found safety, welcome, clean sheets, an...

 "It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it." ~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Writer/Mystic

There is a calling in life that is spiritual but not religious. It comes from deep within us and from influences outside of us. It comes from losses and longings, from lessons not yet learned, from lost loves, from emotional hurts we felt but never healed. It comes from thinking we failed our parents, from missing obvious life messages, from disappointing ourselves. It comes from sorry parenting, from unrealistic expectations we accepted, from betrayals received and given. It comes from faulty theology, from the wrong ideas about God, from fears that we are born bad and stay bad. It comes from kids or teens or adults who bullied us, from sexual abuse, from relationship battering, from being belittled in some wounding way or ways. The call also comes from memories of being loved, from the embrace of grace, from cheerleaders on the sidelines of our life, from the nurture of people who clearly believe we matter to them and to the world. It comes from extraordinary moments, from ...

It was one of those really cold dreary days recently and Ingrid and I were on our way to the Half Price Book store to browse, mingle among the shelves, look for a good book, and get something hot to drink in the Black Forest Coffee Shop. On our way we stopped at a traffic light and there on the corner, his face against the wind, a not nearly warm enough jacket on, was a small Latino man selling candy apples on a long wooden pole he held in front of him. I looked at him and thought of all the mean things that are said about immigrants these days, documented or not; how so many in this country have no interest in giving them a fair chance at making a good life here; how they supposedly steal our jobs. I wondered if he had a wife and children at home he was trying to care for. How many men would brave the cold on a Saturday afternoon to sell apples? The pole was full. I couldn’t tell he’d sold a single thing and I suspected he might have been there for some time. I commented ...

It seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work.  ~ Madeleine L'Engle, Novelist The work of God it seems to me is not about some kind of holy living.  It's not about someone's prescribed righteousness.  It's not about moral rules.  It has nothing to do with saving people from hell or even from themselves. There are of course endless ideas about God.  Whole religions and theological doctrines have been built upon those ideas.  Some of those ideas come from various sacred texts: the Bible, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, and others. But whatever your thoughts or beliefs about God may be, if they don't begin and center in and end in love, then they seem to me to be little more than attempts at strained piety or becoming holier-than-thou. It is not in the protection of ourselves that God's work is done.  It is not in making sure we have the right beliefs.  It is not in fooling ourselves that we ful...

“Truly powerful people have great humility. They do not try to impress, they do not try to be influential. They simply are. People are magnetically drawn to them. They are most often very silent and focused, aware of their core selves. ... They never persuade, nor do they use manipulation or aggressiveness to get their way. They listen. If there is anything they can offer to assist you, they offer it; if not, they are silent.” ~ Sanaya Roman, Author/Mystic