A new day. After several weeks of spinning activity, crazy fun and heartbreaking change, Jack and I are on our own with no activity. Perfect. Strategic Idea: a week of healthy consumption and no screens. Adventure. First: we dive into my office downstairs to explore some family history. I teach Jack to thread a 50 year old 16mm projector. (He…
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Lots of helpful hints on building our platforms, eh? It’s all good. I know from a business point of view we need a platform from which to influence our tribe and sell stuff. From a branding point of view we need a platform from which to build our strategic pillars of messaging and design. I lived in those worlds for…
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Monday Morning. I couldn’t get this out yesterday. Fathers Day. In this week, I read two letters from two brothers, sons of the same man: one with joyful, gushing feelings of love and admiration for his deceased father. The other with deep hurt and life-long damage caused by “a s— of a man” that needed to be painstakingly healed as a…
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Scandalous runs in my family. It goes back for generations. In this fuzzy 1973 snapshot of a few well-mannered, if giddy, English family members, the layers of unheard of behavior would make your hair curl! The woman in the middle: my grandmother. Born in Santiago Chile in 1901, married an Englishman who worked for the BBC. During WWII her husband…
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You’ve seen a bumblebee when it bounces frantically, persistently into the window, unaware of the clear and solid obstacle between him and the luscious bouquet of wildflowers on your sun porch? The squirrels and robins watch this bumblebee and try to shout to him “it’s no use!” but he doesn’t seem to get it. He thinks he can fly through the…
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It finally came. Like many, I followed closely as my best-friend-Don (who I’ve not yet technically met actually in real person face-to-face) struggled and amazed everyone with the whole GET IT TOLD process. The BLJ book, the other book about the making of the movie, the funding of the movie, the almost not movie …. (inhale) and now the public…
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I love everything about this picture. Must be 1971. Beverly Hills Village, in Birmingham Michigan. Most of our clothes were made by fabulous-mom. I know the skirt Annie’s wearing was originally part of a full set of Singer-crafted, floor length Christmas “gowns” for each of us. I’m wearing an ultra-hip, extra-wide, cherry-red Jan Brady watch. Alice’s culotte-jumper was likely made out…
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I’ve traveled a somewhat circuitous pathway from the religious rules of my childhood, to a new understanding of the full work of Jesus-God (which is emphatically law-averse for many good reasons), to a new independent place where I know that God sees through all spiritual camouflage. It is our hearts He wants – because only then can He free us…
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Ten years ago today I woke up at the normal time to start the day, but my emotions were out of sorts. Indescribable and awkward. Not before or since, do I remember having such an uneasy anxiety inside of me. I crawled back into bed and pulled the covers up over my face, leaving only my eyes peering out (obviously…
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Yehaaaaa! Roller Coasters got nothin’ on 2011. Good thing we love the ride and trust its maker with our life! Three family passings, and moment-by-moment opportunities to turn over our fear to our loving and creative God. I don’t know where I’d find peace – as a parent of a traveling, far-away college athlete, a beautiful 13 year old who’s…
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Pastor Jim Cymbala uses a wonderful metaphor of the Holy Spirit of God settling on us like dew settles on the earth during those secret hours when nighttime brings it’s calm and cool. God’s Holy Spirit, coats us with a gentle presence, almost invisible to the eye, but nourishing and surprising. It happens while we sleep and then first light…
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Every day we get another chance to adjust our settings; turn the dials of our vision, our focus, our intention, our daily starting point. When we are overly focused (read: obsessed) on the person-to-person interactions, we are choosing to live horizontally. This often results in serious side-effects: frustrations, worries, expectations and, on good days certainly, even delightful joy and thrilling…
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I got caught shoplifting when I was 18 years old. I know, I know. REALLY late-bloomer. The security guard’s cold hand clenched my left wrist as I attempted to leave the store without paying for the pair of jeans that hid in my bag. The crime took place in a Hudson’s department store in 1980 in a middle-class suburb of…
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Is your happiness every day dependent on the actions reactions, expectations or desires of other people? … at all? Quit it! Here’s a PEP TALK for Monday: Choose to Be Grateful. Offer gratitude for the basics that we all have and sometimes forget, but also offer gratitude for the tough things that make us stronger. This is…
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Steve was reading to Jack tonight before bed and they found themselves in the story of Jesus walking on water. Jack asked, “what’s he doing?” Steve answered, “He’s walking on water.” Which made Jack ponder a bit and say, “It looks like he’s standing on the water. How’d he do that?” “It’s a miracle!” Then Jack smirked and nodded and…
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Today I commit to getting it all pulled together. There are thousands of pages written down. Decades of journals, outlines, individual thoughts and attempts to write the book.
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My reticular activator might be offline for maintenance. Perhaps it’s “normal” for us to have what seems like obvious connections in our deeper mind and heart but we ourselves don’t intellectually see the connection until our reticular activator gets the message…. sometime much later. Which probably isn’t technically how the RA works. Hmmm. I know I have certain realities tucked…
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A train from Detroit to Chicago in 1955. A transatlantic passenger ship from Liverpool to Ellis Island in the same year. Each of these simple, everyday passages carried a young, scared teenager who would soon come together to establish life’s direction for another generation of people. Today, I can touch the words that were entered on the ship’s log as…
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People often ask “how do we know what God wants for our life?” I tell the stories about how my life has transformed into new depths of peacefulness as well as more genuine excitement and NO-FAIR!-awesome opportunities. New friends nod with some assumption that it’s always been that way. “What a nice life. You’ve done well.” Nope. I’ve been rescued. …
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What do you need God to shatter? What are we afraid to lose ? Will we ask Him, and allow Him to shatter that which we hold as obstacles to our true growth? It might hurt. It might mean we lose C O N T R O L of our moment. But it will mean that we will experience supernatural…