With Father’s Day around the corner I decided to compose a short list of books that inspired me to “up my dad-game.”
To make the exercise interesting I only gave myself five minutes to write the list, I limited myself to five titles, and I couldn’t use Google.
The list had to be spontaneous, written under pressure, and maddeningly inadequate. This way there would be so many glaring omissions that others would be moved to offer their own suggestions.
Here are five books containing great fathers who inspired me to become a better father.
To Kill a Mockingbird-Harper Lee [...] Continue Reading →
What a Cool Weekend
We spent two wonderful days reading the six-word memoirs people sent back to my blog. Some of them were funny, others were so sacred they brought us to silence, a few were brave and laid bare their souls, and one or two were so provocative and descriptive you could base a movie on them.
Over 104 Responses!
We had over 104 responses so picking a family favorite nearly tore our tribe apart. In the end we were forced to come up with three categories.
[...] Continue Reading →
Smith Magazine: Home of the Six-Word Memoir is brilliant. (http://bit.ly/imKDsX).
Smith challenges people to creatively sum up their life story in six words and then share it with their online community. The results are often profound, provocative, or simply very funny.
Here are some examples:
“Decade of diapers: didn’t change jewelry.”
“middle class: above poverty. below dreams.
“Rollercoaster life means lots of vomit.”
“Couldn’t find needle. Burned down haystack.”
Here’s why everyone should write a six-word memoir.
The exercise will bring you into conversation with your soul about the arc and meaning of your life story. In addition, if you share your six-word memoir with [...] Continue Reading →
This morning I woke up and asked God the question, “What really matters today?”
Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Today.
God doesn’t like to be rushed so I let the question brew. The answer came while I was in the shower.
Be compassionate.
My field of vision is embarrassingly narrow. Much of the time it is consumed by the dramas that make up my life. In the morass of my self-interest I forget Plato’s adage: “Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
Let’s not kid ourselves. From the barista at Starbucks to your closest friend, everyone is hanging on for [...] Continue Reading →
I spent the last two days with New Testament scholar NT Wright, who spoke for the Conversations on Faith and Courage Series I curate at Christ Church in Greenwich, CT.
Tom did a masterful job of enlarging our understanding of the gospels and casting an inspiring vision of our place in the story of God.
What separates Tom from the many theologians I have heard in the past is not his incredible grasp of the Bible, or his ability to lay out dense theological material in an accessible way, though he possess these gifts in spades.
What is most unusual and admirable about [...] Continue Reading →
Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me
“When I first discovered the grainy picture in my mother’s desk—me as a towheaded two year old sitting in what I remember was a salmon-orange-stained lifeboat—I was overwhelmed by the feeling that the boy in the boat was not waving and laughing at the