Thinking Outloud

Peter is currently the Lead Pastor at my former congregation, Shepherd of the Lake Lutheran, Prior Lake, MN, has written such a beautiful and wise devotion about faith, family and gender, I just have to share. Thanks, Peter. Awesome. http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs044/1102142675015/archive/1103489936318.html

I have been thinking about my, and our, experience of helplessness in the face of the Gulf oil disaster. About what it feels like in our bodies to be continuously exposed to experiences in the world that we can't control but which have large, perhaps even life changing effects on our lives. In the last 50 years or so, psychology as a science has become increasingly wise about experiences that wound the soul. The kind of happenings that lock up a part of our brains, quite literally, from easy connection to the rest of our inner experience and cause us to emotionally get stuck in the memory. We call these experiences traumas. Trauma with a capital T. In the current mental health definition of post-traumatic stress syndrome, a person witnesses or experiences something life-threatening, shocking, and horrific, but with one key experiential ingredient : they feel powerless. Powerlessness is what seems to turn a terrible experience into a Trauma; the inability to respond. Being ab

When I meet with families and teens, the form of family that most often seeks family therapy, the issue of Authority arises pretty quickly. It is frequently The Issue when it comes to teenagers and their parents. As teens grow and develop their nascent emotional self, they need to take on more and more self control, discipline and choice. This conflicts with their parents' familiar patterns of control, decision making, discipline and tolerance of conflict, the sense of which has been developed in the family through that child's life. When children become more autonomous, the adults must flex more while maintaining steady goals for the family. This isn't easy, and is generally full of conflict. Now add into the mix of many families divorce, step parents and siblings, shared physical custody and chronically changing schedules. The level of conflict and stress can get very high -- and everyone begins to act out their frustration and pain. Unlike much religious and talk

            For thousands of years, people have expected their children to marry within their family faith and culture. Family life, in its largest sense, is easier this way. Marriage partners are easier to find among shared communities like synagogues, mosques, parochial schools or parishes; families know more about each other and often form smoother in-law relationships. Religious rituals bind partners to preceding generations as well as to their future children and to one another. All the thousand small, nearly invisible connections shared faith creates helps to enable more stable marriages and thicker, stronger emotional ties between parents, children, in-laws and the larger religious community.             It isn’t the distrust of the outside world as much as the desire to sustain the uniqueness of a specific religious worldview that has linked Catholic to Catholic, Jew to Jew, Muslim to Muslim, Hmong to Hmong in marriage for generations. The practical, easier simplicity of sha

Though late to the game, I have become a fan of the short-hand email version of communication, texting. At least, the positive, stay-in-touch with my teenagers feature of it. But for this coming generation of near-adults, it seems that texting is the primary mode of relationship connection. What will that mean to them in the future? Listen in to Kerri Miller's MidMorning talk show on MPR this week to hear a discussion of this topic. For teens texting is the new talking | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

A couple of weeks back I wrote an essay for the Savage Pacer , one of the columns I have done for the paper every few weeks or so since 1997. This time, I wrote about my disgust with the Roman Catholic leadership about the decades of cover ups of child abuse and pedophilia that continue to be discovered. I am just one of the hundreds of people writing, blogging, speaking, and interviewing recently on this continuing scandal. My ideas are certainly not unique in any way, and are informed by my 25+ years of study and personal service as a pastor of the Church. Want to read it? Here it is:  Savage Pacer column It generated a lot of feedback. I'm happy I have more than a few readers, and that I can continue to inspire people with my words. But the most angry people respond, of course, and their letters to the editor were printed in the paper last week. I decided I didn't need to read them myself. I guess they were pointed upset and shocked. I'm just glad they didn't wr

I see it this way : God is part of the human experience. Constantly. I believe that God uniquely joined with the one called Jesus and through him embodied the will and desire of God.  I hear in the NT gospels the constant pull of God toward healing, God's compassion for all human suffering, and God's dreams for a more just creation. When Jesus was executed / crucified, I see the worse of human power brutalizing and silencing truth. God doesn't answer. Death happens. God allows the silence to speak. And then God raises Jesus up from death. God heals Jesus even from death itself. This is the central proclamation of the Christian faith: God is our Creator force whose hallmark is life, healing, and restoration. Along with others of the Christian community, I bear witness to God's drive to heal and restore the world. I have been healed. Over and over again. And in death, even then, I will be healed and rise. These are the central powers of God. And this is what J