The World's Okayist Pastor

12/14/12  - another horrible day. A 20 year old man walks into an elementary school and opens fire. Young children and teachers killed before the young man takes his own life. American TV rushes to cover the story - to get the first break in the story, to show the first pictures of people weeping. At the same time around the world a man walks into a school in China stabs 22 young children. A small blurb is put out in America. This leads to ask the question - how narrow minded are we in America that we can only focus on stuff in our own culture. Can't both groups mourn together? Can't we pray for both groups together? Can't we offer prayer vigils for both? I sometimes want to tell people who say that they don't understand why America isn't loved around the world that these are part of the reason why. We think the whole planet revolves around us. We think God has only favored America and we teach that even if we don't realize it when we say the phrase "God Bl

If you hadn't noticed I haven't spent much time blogging in November or December. It's partly because I work too many hours. The other reason is because it's the part of my I call the self protector coming out. It's the part of you that convinces the rest of you that you're okay, you're fine and you just keep going along with life. The self protector adds the layers of tape to attempt to hold yourself together. That part is doing this work because it knows that if and when you break, crack or even think about your brokenness you finally realize you're not okay that you will finally feel. You'll finally experience that hurt and pain you've been dragging around. You'll realize that you're not whole/holy and you hurt and it hurts deep and to the core. It's that self protector that says just be numb. You might not realize that the self protector is at work because you don't recognize that you're not feeling. It's kind of a vac

I struggle with the concept of being responsible. I have never lacked at being the responsible one in many situations. My OCD tendencies and leadership style tend to suit me being the responsible person in situations. However, when it comes to life I find that I tend to let my responsible self dominate the rest of my life. If you think of a person being made of a variety of parts that could be seen as individual people that all sit in a circle. As whole they make you up and should work to keep you in balance. There's the lover, fighter, career person, responsible person, the higher self, the inner critic, so on and so on. It is easy to get out of balance in this group. One person will tend to come to the fore front and for me right now it's the responsible one. While not always a bad thing to be responsible, when that is your dominate mode of operation balance is lost. The whole self loses touch with the things that ground and refresh a person. They lose sight of the joy in cre