Category Archives: Weekly Reflections

Imago Dei: My Lutheran Love Letter

I spent almost every summer while in college as a camp counselor at Imago Dei, an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) camp in Wisconsin. Youth ministry had become my passion and purpose, one so personally fulfilling that I justified the fact that I was attempting to love God and others without loving myself. A […]

Owasippe: A Love Letter to Scouting

I loved Scouting as a teenager, and it absolutely made me a better human. I still draw on the skills and knowledge I developed in Scouts, and I look back with fondness on the many friends I made and the experiences I had with them during this time when I was endeavoring to find my […]

Happy Birthday Dad

Monday, October 20, begins another work week for millions of people after a weekend of football games and preparation for a Halloween that falls on a Friday this year. Monday is also my father’s birthday and Wednesday marks two years since he left this world. Life truly is both bitter and sweet. Tears and laughter; […]

My Yankee Doodle Moment of Fame

During those late childhood instances when I found myself alone at home, I would secretly live out my alter ego as a famous artist. Performing for my introvert-friendly audience that resided safely within my own imagination. My family in absentia, I would began to prepare for my prepubescent performance by opening the lid on our […]

Fifty-Nine Birthdays (Me-wow)

I’m days away from celebrating my fifty-ninth birthday. Ready to take my final stroll (running seems so unnecessary), across a decade that’s been less than fabulous. My fifties have been tumultuous, terrifying and troubling. A decade of distress marked by being laid-off twice (something I’ve never experienced prior in my life). The death of my […]

Choosing Love: Rejecting the False Narrative of Oppressed and Oppressor

We live in a myopic binary world trapped in a malicious belief that other humans are either the oppressed or the oppressor but never both. There is no grey rainbow, only a black and white ideology of identity; victim and villain. An “us versus them” worldview predicated solely on my judgement or the soulless judgements […]

Love, Not Might, Makes Right: A Birthday Story About Baseballs and Bullies

Social media was buzzing with outrage and opinions last weekend, like it does every day of the week, when a well-aged Phillies fan became irate over a home run ball that was hit into the stands by Harrison Bader of the Phillies. As the crowd scurried for possession of the battered ball, a father who […]

Love Transcends Scriptural Discernment

While I welcome everyone to my writing, because that is the nature of love, this reflection is specific to my brothers and sisters who call Jesus Lord. Words long overdue, but ones that now require revelation. Revealing not only my heart, but matters that trouble my heart as a believer in the body of Christ. […]

Exiled Insights While Writing My Memoir

These past three years of writing sometimes feels like I’ve exiled myself from the only world I have known; and I did. No longer participating in life’s race to accumulate, instead emptying my heart through writing my memoir while sharing smaller scaled stories on my website and on  Substack. Writing became both my resuscitated passion […]