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Guests Passing Through   Anger. Fear. Shriveling self-doubt. Although I cannot close my door to you, I do not have to give you  the food from my table   Shame. Regret. Clinging attachment. I will welcome you as guests with painful gifts to offer, but I do not have to turn down the bed and…
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I’m grateful for Charlie Collier, theological editor at Wipf and Stock, for many reasons, but today I’m thankful he told me to see the move Arrival. He had me when he said it had game theory in it. First off, the movie is great. Like…fantastic. So, if you haven’t seen it, you should. And you…
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If you are in the DC area and interested in a slice of pizza, you might think twice before heading over to Comet Ping Pong. Thanks to an absurd fake news story claiming Comet Ping Pong is a cover for a massive Satanic pedophilia ring frequented by Democratic pols including Hillary Clinton, the restaurant has…
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So, this may be falling under the rubric of “too soon”, but I’ve been doing some thinking from a behavioral theological perspective on Clinton’s electoral loss. Two things: first, I write this as someone who voted for Clinton and am extremely troubled by the specter of a Trump presidency; second, by framing this as “Clinton’s…
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Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. Sandra Bland. Freddy Gray. Michael Brown. And so many more black people have been killed in encounters with police in America the last two years. Right now we are rightly talking about racial bias: implicit, learned biases that affect our understanding, perceptions, and actions below the level of our conscious awareness. Given…
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Most people think they can tell when a process is random. Once, when I was at the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse building in downtown Portland (surprisingly to serve as a juror not as defendant) four groups of jurors were called forward to be impaneled. One of the groups was overwhelmingly composed of women. A guy…
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Cooperation seems like a…pretty good thing, right? Like, I grew up on Sesame Street. I know “cooperation makes it happen.” And some of the time Biblical wisdom seems to confirm this general truth. Matthew’s Gospel morphs the rabbinic saying of where two or three are gathered around the Torah the Shekinah rests on them to…
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Two friends from seminary recently shared an incredibly beautiful story about their family. I didn’t know Mac and Katy that well in seminary- they were seniors when I was just starting. I remember Mac the best. He was tall and had this huge, beautiful mane of long, blond hair. Their family now lives in Raleigh,…
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Everything is Waiting for You Your great mistake is to act the dramaas if you were alone. As if lifewere a progressive and cunning crimewith no witness to the tiny hiddentransgressions. To feel abandoned is to denythe intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,even you, at times, have felt the grand array;the swelling presence, and the chorus,…
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When I was in junior high school one day my friend, Jay Wiley, said, “I feel like Taco Bell for lunch.” I stared at him like he was from another planet. We were in Middle School. We weren’t allowed to leave the school grounds for lunch. And I was a good kid. Mostly. I certainly…
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