Tag: Advent

“I feel that writing is an act of hope, a sort of communion with our fellow [human beings].” - Isabelle Allende Last year, I made a commitment to put my Advent practice to work in a concrete and tangible way. My plan was to choose one of the Advent themes,...

Thirteen years ago I had the most severe headache of my life. I was experiencing the bursting of a brain aneurysm. I went through surgery where 2 aneurysms were closed with titanium clips. I was in a sorry state, physically and mentally and spent 31 days at St. Joseph’s ICU....

I had been struggling with the concept of practicing hope because I was stuck on the idea that I first had to find hope. This is easy when I make my world small and look within my family and neighborhood because I am blessed in my life. The difficulty comes...

I was shocked! As a young 30-year-old runner, someone who’d been physically active and healthy all my life, I was stunned in 1999 when I felt like I was having a heart attack. In follow-up with a cardiologist, I learned that I needed a mitral valve replacement. No problem –...

The world needs a little more hope. The discernment of my call to Seminary was, at a fundamental level, centered on a desire to help bring God’s hope shown in Jesus Christ to a world in need. Too often, unfortunately, rather than living as examples of hope, the followers of...

I changed jobs this year. For three years, I worked in communications for a Fortune 200 food and agriculture company. I had challenging and good work to do. I had opportunities to learn and grow. I worked with talented people. I was compensated well. I was rising in the company,...

“Trump administration rolls back protections for transgender students.” “Administration announces they will ban transgender people from serving in the military.” “Hate Violence Against Trans People Still ‘Disturbingly Common’” “Candace Towns is the 25th Trans Person Murdered in 2017” (posted on 11/2) It was around this time last year that I...

As a young man working in a lab in St. Paul, I looked up to the engineers I worked with and thought, “I can do that…I want to do that.” The path to get there was not an easy one but a few night classes, a good enough score on...

You and I do it. We all do it: we speak as if hope and wish are synonyms, interchangeable words. The old Hebrew Bible and the New Testament provide a different view. We can sum it up: wish is circumstantial; hope is transcendent. Isaiah writes that though the strong, vibrant...

“Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.” Emily Dickinson’s poem about hope has always been a favorite. Our crazy, stressful, uncertain world requires us to search for light and hope. In the darkest of...