Life at 3 miles an Hour

As the view from my window displays for me this morning, Fall is solidly here in the Northwest.  The leaves are turning their muted shades of red and yellow while everything else has chosen its own form of brown.  Next week, Halloween makes its annual appearance with its own shades of color, much of which will certainly be borrowed by the impending death and hibernation of the season.  It occurred to me this morning on my commute across the street to my office, that looks down on this scene, there is a natural correlation for me between the seasonal colors and the holidays.  Right around the corner comes Thanksgiving, again with its reds, yellows, oranges, browns, all signs of harvest and the end or at least dormancy of another life cycle.  It has always been this way for me.  My life has always been lived across the northern reaches of our country. When I first looked out my window on the scene below, with the colors before me and Halloween plans in t...

This morning, as I ventured down the block for my weekly writing get away, I was confronted with a gauntlet that I was really not willing to pass through.  Look at the accompanying photo and see if you don't agree.  It puts another spin to the Portlandia "put a bird on it" culture.  There are some occasions where I might be willing to chance my timing, however this was not one of them...not after last weeks attempt at writing.  Last week, after settling in to my chair with my big red cup of caffeine perfection, I was hit with some writing inspiration that, in my estimation, hasn't occurred for me in recent memory.  It might be years now.  I had a burst of words and wit and insight and it all flowed together like some cosmically orchestrated divine plan.  You'll just have to take my word for it...because....after about 45 minutes of channeling from the Great Author himself, my post went blank.  Now in today's technologically advanced, plug and p...

It's a beautiful Fall day, I've got a caramel latte in a big red cup and I'm "Learning to Fly" with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in my ears. The only thing that could possibly ruin it is another trip through the Facebook land of political commentary. I can't help but imagine the heights that we as a nation might aspire to if we collectively invested as much time and passion in our vocations as we do with "sharing" and "liking" each others recent finds on YouTube and all things cyber. What is the most intriguing and, I'm not going to lie, distressing is the amount of rabid rhetoric from people who, like myself, claim to follow Jesus. It's not a partisan thing either...in fact, in my opinion it's one of the only truly bi-partisan efforts within our political process. At the moment, I am leading my community o'faith through a study in what it would look like to actually be a people who live lives of holiness. This act...