• decluttering
    decluttering - emotions - Featured - Holy Spirit - temple

    Keys to Decluttering Our Souls

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    Decluttering our souls with all sorts of negative thoughts and emotions doesn’t come easily. When I lived in Houston, road rage was… well, all the rage. The news constantly reported women getting out of their cars in order to physically attack one another.  In one almost comic plot twist, a man stole the car of one of the brawling women.  After all, she left the car running in her haste to bring it home to the woman who offended her.  But road rage isn’t that uncommon, although thankfully, yielding to its siren call is less usual.  But anger at the…

  • connection - Discernment - Featured - mindful - mindfulness - Practice - senses - spiritual discernment

    Mindfulness and Discernment: Make the Connection

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    Hannah Whitall Smith, a Quaker from the mid nineteenth century, once said, “Mind the checks.”  I respect this advice deeply, mainly as a result of not minding the checks.  I once took a personality test that was supposed to determine who in the Bible my personality was most like.  Unlike the phony Facebook tests that determine which Disney princess you should have as your maid of honor, this test based itself on the Meyers Briggs personality test.  How exactly its authors determined the results for the men and women in the Bible, I do not know.  However, my test resulted in…

  • abuse - cancer - Featured - fired - Pharisee - Teacher

    Getting Fired Taught Me a Frightening Lesson

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    I got fired about fifteen years ago for a lack of integrity as a Christian. At least that was the charge leveled at me, though I received no concrete examples of poor behavior, nor could I think of any. I was a single mom of four girls and worked as instructor at the local state university as my main occupation.  In the mornings, in exchange for tuition for all four girls, I taught two hours of junior and senior English at a local private Christian school.  Right away I noticed that tension pervaded the school.  The principal seemed gracious, but…