Don’t Should on Me

There is something inherently wrong with institutionalized religiosity, aka: church, in America. I’ve been struggling to understand this for a few decades. My first attempts to understand it resulted in me running as far away as I could. I literally pursued Hell and all the accouterments that…

I Apologize

I happened to sit down at a table with Chuck. We were attending a celebration of life event for Bob Armstrong, a firefighter everyone…

An Open Letter to Denny

Last night I saw you changed your Facebook profile photo. It is a picture of you and your kids. My eyes welled up with tears as I looked closer. I’ve not seen a picture of you since your scheduled/cancelled surgery and the disappointment of that event. You look tired, scared, and the…

Interstellar Fatherhood

Is it ever OK for a father to put his family on hold for the sake of his career? Or, to put it another way, how do…

Dear 47 year old Me

Dear Gary,

Wow, look at you. You’re 47 — with a wife and a one year old daughter. I know you never expected that to happen. It looks like you’re finally growing up. Good for you! I could go on about all the growth you’ve made and the stuff you’ve overcome, but we…

A New Direction?

We arrived in Oregon several months ago to begin a new adventure. I took a challenging job that I was warned to avoid — but…

Fighting for My Life

What happens when the world you find yourself in, isn’t the world it should be? What does one do when the organizations they’ve aligned themselves are no longer living the values they should be? How does one manage expectations and disappointments when those around them are not headed in the…

Why the Church Needs to Change

and why I’m not going to shut up about it

Facebook

I’ve been using social media since the late 1980s. Compuserve we called it. Then I dabbled in MySpace. I was an early adopter of Twitter — and that was a lot of fun and I made some good friends. I resisted Facebook. It seemed to trendy, cliche’, and I thought it would just be a phase. Besides, Twitter is where…