Can Depression Offer Us a Gift?

In Thomas Moore’s book, Care of the Soul, he writes eloquently about the gift that depression may offer people. It’s an opportunity to embrace emotions that we often don’t deal with, leading us to a better understanding of ourselves and how we want...

Pressed to the Ground: A Theological Re-Frame of Depression

In my continuation on the topic of depression, especially male depression (here and here), I wanted to share something with you by Parker Palmer. In his wonderful book Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (a must read), Parker has one of the most...

Pushing Beyond the Limits of Your Pie

[image by net_efekt’s] Marathon Training In the Spring of 2006 I had this deep yearning to run a marathon, something I had never done before, yet something I always wanted to do. Training for this marathon was going to require some shifting of things in my...

Depression: Hope Through Hospitality

The fourth and final video I shot for LifeChurch.tv on depression aired today and is titled Finding Hope. Monday’s video was An Anchor in the Journey-Exodus 17:1. Tuesday’s video was Depression-At the Movies continued. Wednesday’s video was Walking...

Identity & Relationality

“The Quaker teacher Douglas Steere was fond of saying that the ancient human question ‘Who am I?’ leads inevitably to the equally important question, ‘Whose am I?’–for there is no selfhood outside of relationship. We must ask the...

Identity in Weakness

This post is an ongoing reflection on the book Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker Palmer. “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the...

Paradigm Shifting, Life Shaping Books

It seems we all like books. And we especially like making lists of books. In 2005 I wrote The Five Books I Would Recommend to a College Student…or Actually, to Anyone!, and listed in another post the Top 100 Religious Books of the 20th Century According to...

Reclaimining Our “Birthright Gifts”

“We arrive in this world with birthright gifts–then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting other disabuse us of them. As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are,...

In Violation of our True Self

I have been returning time and time again to one of my favorite books on the topic of identity and vocation, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker Palmer. I first read the book in 2002 when I was finishing up my M. Div. at Fuller...

The Ego Driven “Christian Cult of Success”

Parker Palmer is the author of one of my favorite books, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. If you have not read it, then you need to stop what you are doing and get in your car and go pick it up. Or stop what you are doing and order it online....