Ask The Popcorn Man

REMEMBER WHEN ON social occasions you responded with lightning quick accuracy to the question “What do you do?" You sat easily with family and friends in a circle of equality. That was then. Things have changed. Imagine. You are either unemployed or underemployed but you have memories of "gainful employment." Now you are increasingly angered by the embarrassing question, "...and what do you do?" The circle of equality now seems distorted by your presence. You feel unproductive and unacceptable. "All they need are good jobs," a friend of mine once bellowed. “Work projects - that would improve their images, get them

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Tools of Character

AS DIFFICULT AS it is to learn to trust a mentor, it is even more arduous to break down our self suspicion. Do we have what it takes to break free of the entanglements of the Dark Wood - to melt with feeling-intellect the icy encrustations of Hell that keep us paralyzed in our self defeating patterns? We stare eyeball to eyeball at the antagonist within, sizing up our character and our chances of restoration.

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Passions of Prometheus

I DON'T THINK that it is inconsequential that my heroes are men.... It is not because women are not as passionate, creative, or in any way undeserving that they don't make my short list of heroes. Rather, it is because I share with most men an inclination toward "Prometheanism". I don't know why it is not as prevalent in most women. Perhaps it is the hard wiring of centuries of birthing and caring for life (if I am allowed that stereotypical explanation). I do not think it is because women are morally superior to men, only that

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Tribute to a Friend's 50th Birthday

Our challenge is to unselfconsciously give our lives away. In this generative discipleship phase our task is to pass it forward, hand it over, in a sense give it up and refuse to hold on to it. What is the “it” in that sentence? The “it ” is our ego, our sense of self in the best sense. We are still making a contribution but no longer looking to strengthen ourselves.

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The Prophetic Protocol

Today's homily is called "The Prophetic Protocol," a strange title! Protocol is about the conventions needed to get things done. It's the how-to of life, whether it relates to our personal lives, our health, finances, worship, even our computers. Protocol requires a problem, a procedure, and a fix. It's a way of getting our feet out of the fire, a proven strategy. Our way of getting things done will differ, depending on the assumptions we make about the resources we have, and how we use them.

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The Passionate Life

Like me with my young son, we are inclined to put our passions into seeing where we stand in relationship with one another. It's about comparison. We look at each other, not so much to honestly evaluate one another but to discern what degree of giftedness our brother or sister has in relation to ourselves. We look over our shoulders to see how someone else does. When we live comparatively like that, the sole purpose of life is to gauge our significance. We all have doubts about ourselves and our worth. It's natural. But the more doubt we

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A Tale of Two Cities

Stealing from the title of Dickens' book A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Watershed's story could be equally called A Tale of Two Wisdoms: God's Wisdom and Human Wisdom (1991-2015). I tell this story not in order to disparage the intellect or learning from a human point of view but rather to show how we might have used these two wisdoms incorrectly. Why and how wisdom gets expressed in our lives is what I have in mind.

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Spiritual Vocation: A Thessalonian Perspective

During a recent Watershed Worship and Discernment service, I confessed my Golden Calf: my creative use of language, my gift of teaching and speaking. The occasion for this confession was Tyler's comment that sometimes what we are overwhelmed by, even obsessed by creatively, can be a gift from God - an expression of our true vocation. To surrender oneself to that creativity seems not the creation of a Golden Calf but rather an enthusiastic response to the divine call. There is an important truth in Tyler's comment that our gifts are from God and that we ought to give ourselves to our vocations as an act of worship.

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Watershed Spirituality

We can't help being thirsty, moving toward the voice of water. Milk drinkers draw close to the mother. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, shamans, everyone hears the intelligent sound and moves with thirst to meet it. - Jeladuddin Rumi (1207-1273) The Image Unveiled James Hillman, the founder of Archetypal Psychology, has become convinced that individual and corporate spiritual growth is made through the meditation on images. The image of what I refer to as Watershed Spirituality comes from the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel. It has to do with rejuvenating waters which make stagnant things fresh, have healing properties, and perpetuate life

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Party Etiquette for Cross and Resurrection People

Watching the movie of David Adam Richards' The Bay Of Love And Sorrows and reading the story of the great banquet in Luke 14:15-24 was like having the same yarn told stereophonically. The Bay Of Love And Sorrows kicks off with a party, a rural New Brunswick booze-fest back in the heady utopian days of the early '70s. Two men, Michael Skid and Everett Hutch, were celebrating their homecoming: Michael from his exotic pilgrimage to India, and Everett from his dreary confinement in a provincial penitentiary.

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