• Daily Life,  I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation,  Music,  Reflections

    Synchronicity and Sadness

    My friend William James Tychonievich writes frequently, eloquently, and in a lively manner about the synchronicity he observes in his daily life. Today I thought of WJT when I learned that a talented but erratic country singer named Luke Bell apparently killed himself yesterday, the same day I learned of the suicide of my childhood friend Len. Mr. Bell seems to have lived a life that could be accurately described as tortured, and the life-taking whispers that chased him for much of his life finally overtook him. You don’t have to listen to many of his songs to recognize his talent and his emotional depth. I thought I would post…

  • Church Life,  Daily Life,  I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation,  Reflections

    My Thoughts, They Are Provoked

    WJT posted one of his singular pieces that troubled me, delighted me, and had me staring at the floor, lost in thought, long after I read it, just as his classic Supergod Delusion essay kept me chewing on his words for weeks after I read the post. Reading this sort of material doesn’t finally answer any questions for me, but like a good Zen koan, the act of reading and the subsequent attempts to digest such things helps me see myself with greater clarity. For the majority of my Christian life, I saw myself as a pretty smart fellow. It was a liberating but excruciatingly painful day when I began…

  • Daily Life,  Dreams,  Reflections

    Deep Into That Darkness Peering

    Over at his blog, William James Tychonievich posted about dreams and included several interesting comments from readers in the post, which he had originally shared in 2013. I enjoyed the post because it got me thinking about my own dream life, which is a maddening one. As I mentioned to William, I almost never remember my dreams, with sporadic and rare exceptions. After reading William’s post, I talked about it with my wife, who is not only a lucid dreamer but who also recalls her dreams in remarkable and consistent detail. As I’ve said many times, this ability must be contained in some chromosome that my double helix is missing.…

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