Loud Mouth in the Balcony Blog
Life from a more heavenly perspective
The furor over the arrest of renowned Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has been painful to watch, even from the balcony of Life’s dramas: Scenes littered with suspicion, mistrust and accusations of racial profiling morphed into outrage, defensiveness, retaliation and, alas, some unfortunate mug shots. None of it—not the incident, the race-based commentary …
Continue reading “Who’s gonna nab the real burglar in Cambridge?”
Millions are waiting for the Anti-Christ to arrive, but it’s been here all along. It sits where we sit, stands where we stand, walks where we walk. And all too often, it speaks when we speak. It prods us to do and say things to others that we would not want done or said to us. It picks fights, fuels dissension, and causes us to choose angry force over peaceful power. It justifies righteous indignation over effective conflict resolution. It’s like a magnet, spinning our moral compass out of control.
In the coin section of my wallet, I carry the tag from an old teabag. It’s a quote from French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire: “A witty saying proves nothing.” Amen. We love clever sayings—even if they don’t make sense, even if our own life experiences have demonstrated something to the contrary, and even if we don’t …
One of the things we have to learn is to discern whether a saying can be proved before we repeat it to others who will blindly accept it as truth.
It happened Thursday. I was taking my daughter to the airport after a blissful weeklong Independence Day vacation from everything. I even played hooky from the home-church: “Uh oh, here comes the tough part.” I looked at Maiysha and instantly felt a little knot in my stomach. I had forgotten how much she dreaded goodbyes. …
Continue reading “Can you make it through the “tough parts?””
If we could trust God enough to know that everything serves our Highest Good, we wouldn’t be angry when un-Christlike Christians or other ego-driven souls try to harm us. We called them onto our stages to push us onto another because it was time to go. Our ego-selves don’t like change, and we needed these souls help. As mean-spirited as they seem, they are fulfilling our missions in meaningful ways. If we could remember that, we would know peace beyond all understanding. We would be joyful when things change.