Weekly Reflections

A brief pause each week to consider what matters, what lingers, and what’s worth remembering.

These stories are available on audio through Substack.

Appalachian Summer: An Unexpected Lesson in Gratitude

When I was sixteen going on seventeen, our church youth group learned about the Appalachia Service Project (ASP), a Christian nonprofit ministry focused on the “eradication of substandard housing in Central Appalachia.” Growing up, I was aware that there were families who didn’t have the same standard of living [...]

08
Nov

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 [...]

01
Nov

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 [...]

25
Oct

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 [...]

18
Oct

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 [...]

11
Oct

Six Lies of the Modern World

As I began to write about my story, I realized not only my deep devotion to the material world but the lies that I believed to sustain my faith in stuff. Lies that sustain the modern world, particularly in the west. Lies that have always deceived us.

04
Oct

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 [...]

27
Sep

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 [...]

20
Sep

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 [...]

13
Sep

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 [...]

06
Sep

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. [...]

23
Aug

When Good People Don’t Ask Why; My Life as a Pharma Marketer

Before you read any further let me make a disclaimer. These written words are borne out of self-reflection not a saintly rebuke. My life has been both a litany of love and a lesson in non-love. Like all humans I have failed and fallen and floundered. I am a [...]

16
Aug