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Five Signs that Reconciliation is Impossible
Reconciliation is a world of its own apart from forgiveness. So I hesitated when someone recently asked me, “How long do I need to keep forgiving?” Because I realized the real question was about reconciliation, I didn’t respond with the standard seventy times seven answer. I suppose we don’t really ever stop forgiving, but knowing when to end futile attempts at reconciliation can be important, even life-saving. I used to be a champion reconciler. What that really means is that I went through the motions of apology and apology acceptance as if they meant something. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn’t. I figured that if someone apologized to me, I…
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How to Tell if You Are in a Cocoon Phase
We Christians often like to talk about transformation, but the cocoon phase of that process is less glamorous. The Bible spills over with stories about men and women in cocoons of one sort or another. The message each time is the same. Some metamorphosis happens fast, but more often than not, change takes some time. The growth required to move from caterpillar to butterfly fascinates me. I remember as a child finding an exotic caterpillar in my backyard. I put it in a small plastic container with food and a stick. Soon a greyish sack, smooth on one side and puckered on the other, hung from the twig I had…
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Finding Your Self and Why it Matters
In the religious stream in which I grew up, finding your self was synonymous with narcissism. Whenever so and so mentioned that their friend or relative was embarking on a quest to find themselves, the adults would snicker. Then they would throw out the Bible verse that says, he who would find himself must first lose himself. That is not quite the way the original reads. I grew up thinking that having a self must be a bad thing indeed. Jesus would not approve. Now my theology has changed rather drastically. That I even have a self is a miracle. In fact, I am pretty sure that it is the greatest…
Healing Through Art & Words
