There are days I just can’t even. I’ve had a list of things – important things! – on my desk for two days that I need to get to before tomorrow night. I only just started them this afternoon. Nothing that took the place of doing my list was unimportant. A call to the Emergency Room, emails, calls, requests for prayer and counseling – all important. Even this blog is important and it still takes a back seat to the other more immediate priorities. I don’t think I’m alone in nee

In the book The Big Leap, there is a concept called the Level of Genius. It’s actually one of four levels and the first two don’t matter as much for our purposes here. The third is Excellence and the fourth is Genius. And they can mess me up sometimes. The level of Excellence is all the stuff you’re good at. You might be really good at it. I was an excellent administrative clerk back in the day. The lawyers loved me because I got things done for them. I got a steady paycheck

Today we broke down the Christmas tree and put everything back for another year. It took an hour and a half, much less time that it took to decorate. There’s no creativity in taking decorations down, unless you count fitting the tree back in the box. It’s a little sad and a bit of relief at the same time. It’s a relief because the holidays are such a busy time of year and I tend to be intensely conscious of the Christ in that time. And that’s why it’s sad, too. As I put away

I’m doing Christmas cards this year. I usually do a few – the silly ones from card stores go back and forth in my family. It’s a fun tradition and doesn’t cost much. But this year, I decided to go big. So far I’ve written about 50 and I have another 40 waiting to be written. At some point I started wondering – will someone be happy to get this? Will they be upset there’s no gift card or check in there? Will this seem like an empty gesture? On the other hand, will this make so

I never liked working in groups in school. I wanted to be in charge of earning my own grades. I didn’t want some other person, who was obviously never going to be as smart as me, messing up my GPA. Yes, I’m talking about elementary school. I had issues. Most days now, I’m an adult. I recognize the Oneness of all beings and I get that life on this planet is a group project. We sink or swim together. There’s a thing called the Bodhisattva vow that says that souls are innumerabl

However, Coach called the whole team over at the next practice and asked how everyone thought they’d done. I picture them remembering that they had fun, so it must have been good. The team members talked about their successes and how it all went. They decided that based on their playing, they had done well. Now, this team may or may not face the right direction. They may or may not bring the ball with them when they run for the touchdown. But by all the gods and goddesses of

Tonight I’m teaching a class whose theme is Immortality. We’re going to be talking about life after death, what it might be like to live without a human body and what we teach about all that. Mostly it ends up being a discussion of the students’ experience with near death experiences, ghosts and other interesting occurrences. The thing is, our teaching is pretty simple. We don’t claim to know. We each individually have our pet theories, but the official teaching is that we ca

I love making lists. I love checking things off my list each day or week. I make a list of things I want to accomplish and then gleefully check them off. I don’t scratch them out because I might not be able to read them easily if I did. I want to go back over the list and make sure I don’t try to do something twice (waste of energy) and I want the joy of knowing exactly what I accomplished. To some degree the whole list thing is useless for doing spiritual practice. I can’t s

I just started reading John C. Maxwell’s “Leadership Gold: Lessons I’ve learned from a lifetime of leading.” Now I read a lot of leadership books. It was part of my training in psychology and as a minister. For whatever reason, I was blessed with folks even outside my official teachers that kept steering me back in the direction of studying leadership. So I know I’m slogging through the wrong book when I sit there thinking, “I could have written this and why is the author dum

Most of you know that I was raised Catholic. I thought all the clergy took the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. However, I’m taking a class right now that says that ain’t so! According to our teacher, many spiritual folks don’t realize that there’s a cultural belief, or something in the race consciousness that says to be spiritual, you must take these vows. What the heck was I thinking? Poverty doesn’t just mean that people will watch to see what car I drive. It means

Our theme this month at the Center for Spiritual Living Prescott is service to the world. Now, depending on how you read this, it can feel overwhelming or wonderful. There’s a part of me that still hears someone’s desires as my problem to take care of (oh, to be free of the old programming!) so the idea of being “in service” can feel overwhelming. On the other hand, I’ve learned that when I am in service and simply doing what I’m doing in the present moment, with no agenda ot