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Leaving Salem

Zen Buddhists use a descriptive phrase that we who are Christian should adopt into our own vocabulary. The phrase is “Idiot’s Compassion.” This term was first used by Chogyam Trungpa, a provocative and controversial Tibetan who helped bring Buddhism to the West in the 1970s. According to Trungpa and others, Idiot’s Compassion is this intense…

This past summer friends of mine sent their eight-year-old daughter to camp. This camp was a primitive affair with lodges, sleeping bags, and creatures of the night. Conspicuously absent were all the comforts of home. Air conditioning, television, soft mattresses, beloved pets, video games, fast-food: Not here. This was the roughing-it world of swarming bugs,…

I pulled from my mailbox that little envelope that I knew would ultimately arrive: A summons requiring my presence in the halls of justice. Jury duty. So I prepared myself to look as disrespectful as possible; not as a difficult a job as you might imagine. Ratty blue jeans, worn sneakers, an unshaven face and…

One Wednesday afternoon my twin sister and I were ripping up terra firma in my grandmother’s fallow garden. We were only five-years-old, just months before beginning kindergarten. My sister, in her clod-crushing zeal, miscalculated the distance between herself and me. I was summarily thumped on the head with a garden hoe. Two distinct memories fill…

Hilda is my dear friend and an example in perseverance and grace. Thanks to Sean Dietrich for this video. Hilda  

“You know Dad, you do a lot of good work in the world, but you need to chill out a little.” So said my eight-year-old son as I clicked the “off” button on my cell phone. He and I were on our way home after a busy Sunday at church. But before we were ten…

When I was a bit younger and a bit braver, a group of friends and I shot the rapids on the Ocoee River in southeast Tennessee. The Ocoee, which I think is the Cherokee word for “terrified rafter” is a world class whitewater adventure. It was the site of the 1996 whitewater Olympic events. Now,…

On this day in history, October 18, 1970, the lives of Roy and Rita McBrayer changed forever. Roy, a shy boy and a month shy of his twenty-second year, and Rita, even younger, were two redneck kids weaving their way through life, Vietnam, and Nixon. When Rita awoke on this day more than four decades…

Do you know the three most frightening words in the English language? “Some assembly required.” You order something online; a toy or a bicycle for your children. Or you go to a big box store to get a grill or piece of patio furniture. When UPS brings it to your door or you find the…

Sometimes everything comes together perfectly: In life, at home, even in church. I had one of those perfect Sunday mornings not long ago. The weather was warm and pleasant. The sky was clear. It was one of those days in which you could actually feel the life around and within you. Worshippers entered the sanctuary…
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