just enough light

Stillness is difficult, still. Mental chatter still takes most of my attention. For the next few days I want to identify the chatter of judgments, labels, and explaining things away rather than listening carefully and seeing clearly. Richard Rohr is one of my current favorite thinkers and writers. He is currently experiencing the 40 days […]

Nothing tangled me up or stopped me dead in my tracks faster than mixing God up in an important decision. Let me explain with some personal history. Growing up in the home of a Southern Baptist minister, I heard from the pulpit and around the dinner table the importance of seeking God’s will and following […]

Letting go of the outcome is a lesson I have to relearn at every turn. It’s one thing to have the concept. It’s quite another thing to put it into action. Isn’t that the way life is? Most of our important lessons are learned once, but the implementation is a challenge with every new decision. […]

One of the many lessons I learned from that experience at Homer Lake (the previous post), and many experiences since then, is the importance of letting go of outcomes. Did I make the right choice from that long day at the lake? Who knows. I’m still living with that decision that keeps unfolding each day. […]

I awoke at 3:30 this morning and was unable to get back to sleep. My mind started working. I had several thoughts about the chatter I’ve been describing, and then I recalled a time when I was able to distinguish between the chatter and something deeper. So I got up and wrote part of this. […]

This is the fifth in a series. Stillness is difficult. I want to sit still and do it “right.” When that doesn’t work after about 30 seconds, I want to get up and do something else. Then I decide to give it a few more minutes. When I realize my mind is still jumping around, […]

You’ve seen that text ribbon that scrolls across the bottom of the TV screen. It has news items or basketball scores or Dow Jones numbers. It is small and unobtrusive, but it takes up part of the screen and part of my attention. It detracts from what I am watching. My attention is split. That […]

The act of being still and paying attention is one of the most difficult things for a person to do.   It sounds simple enough. Don’t move around, don’t make noise, and pay attention. No big deal, right? Wrong. Huge deal. And yet, in every religious tradition, this is a basic discipline. You can call it […]

I go through much of my day on automatic pilot. I don’t pay attention to many of the routine things I do each day. I can go through a meal without really paying attention to what I am eating. At the conclusion of a conversation I may remember very little of what was said. I […]

I clearly remember climbing the hill at Lakeview Baptist Encampment that evening of our last day of the church youth retreat. I was 16; it was the summer after my sophomore year. I had spent a long weekend at camp with 30 or so high school kids from our church, my best friends. We gathered […]