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the president we want … in a word

Posted on December 13, 2007 | Filed Under politics 

We hosted a pre-caucus house party this evening at our home during which I asked our guests to express what it is they are looking for in a presidential candidate in one word. Their answers make quite a list!

integrity
compassion
inspiration
honesty
justice
humility
diplomacy
reconciler
character
change
moral

I do hope and pray that our next president will be marked by attributes like these!

emmanuel

Posted on December 5, 2007 | Filed Under humility 

From I Like Being Five Years Old, an entry by Debi Sanders last week on the inward/outward website:

My friend Kim, who worked with Good Shepherd Ministries for the last ten years, just returned from a year in Haiti where her only “job” was to be with people and build friendships. The Haitians were in awe that an American would come to live with them and not try to “fix” them or improve them or undertake a project.

Jesus certainly did “fix” people’s lives. He healed their diseases, forgave their sins, challenged them to give up their “idols.” But, first …

mia or barry?

Posted on August 8, 2007 | Filed Under humility, joy, personal life 

On our way home to Iowa from our vacation in Maine, we stayed with a friend in Oneonta, New York, and visited the National Soccer Hall of Fame. On August 26, Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy will be honored there as 2007 inductees. Here’s hoping that Barry Bonds, the new “home run king” of baseball, will not merit such an honor in nearby Cooperstown …

Let’s see, Mia or Barry?

One an athlete of character, intensity, passion, compassion, humility, generosity, and unselfishness. …

the desire to please you

Posted on March 6, 2007 | Filed Under humility, spirituality 

A prayer from Thomas Merton:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me, I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And …

a politics “of the people”

Posted on December 31, 2006 | Filed Under politics 

They are out there … those ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found a way — in their own lives, at least — to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves. I imagine the white Southerner who growing up heard his dad talk about niggers this and niggers that but who has struck up a friendship with the black guys at the office and is trying to teach his own son different, who thinks discrimination is wrong but doesn’t see why the son of a black …

happy new year

Posted on December 29, 2006 | Filed Under grace, humility, spirituality 

Humility is the first step
Acknowledging that you cannot
Pull the right strings, making life dance to your beat, or
Push the right buttons to guarantee the future
You have in mind.

Now is the time! the time to release pride and fear, the time to
Embrace the God who embraces you, to
Welcome the future God has in mind, to say

Yes! to God and Yes! to God’s way, to
Expect that God’s way leads to a glorious future for us all, and to
Act on that expectation, hoping and loving and serving and making peace,
Right here, right now!

whose church is it?

Posted on March 26, 2006 | Filed Under favorite posts, humility, ucc 

Christ is like a single body, which has many parts; it is still one body, even though it is made up of different parts.

So, then, the eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” Nor can the head say to the feet, “Well, I don’t need you!”

But that is just what we are doing! Saying we don’t need each other. Saying we’d be better off without each other. It breaks my heart! We call ourselves The United Church of Christ, but I wonder. Sometimes, it seems, we are hardly “united” and hardly “of Christ.”

We are increasingly polarized as …

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