ContemplativeJourney

Who could have imagined the tremendous response that would be generated by such a simple statement?  In one of those moments of sheer joy in life, I posted to Facebook that today might just be the greatest day in the history of ever! I was surprised by the number of people who responded to the post.  So...what exactly would such a wonderful day be like? Let's dissect it, in hopes it's something that we can repeat day after day! I woke up...all is well.  Health, life, all of my needs met, and a meeting at 8am with a fine young man who works for Chase Bank as a Small Business Banker.  There is nothing quite like having an unpleasant experience with a banker to make you truly appreciate having a great banker!  This has been my experience for the past year, as our growing company began doing business last February with a small boutique bank that offers a 'banking concierge' service.  Sounds wonderful, right?  It wasn't wonderful. Ha!  My Mr. Won...

When we are young, we dream great dreams and have great visions.  We will be nurses, doctors, firemen and superheroes.  We will marry Prince Charming and have beautiful children who think we are the most wonderful parents in the history of the world.  As we grow older, we sometimes wake up to find our dreams have faded away...some of us lose sight of our dreams altogether.  Others of us never really learn to dream, or find the loss of some dreams too painful to risk trying to dream again. A thought occurred to me just now about the nature of dreaming...when we're in love, we usually dream great dreams about the object of our affection.  What we will do and where we will go...what we will say in a special moment, and just how we will look.  In a word, dreaming is akin to obsession. An obsession that steals us away...lost in imaginative thoughts of happy times and unlimited possibilities. Do you have any dreams left to dream?  Any magnificent obs...

  Why worship? It's popular today for folks to say, "I can worship just as easily on the golf course as I can in the church...." or, "I can worship God better taking a walk in the woods than I ever did in church." Maybe so.  Perhaps you can.  Sometimes I believe these things may be true, at least for certain times and occasions.  In the months following my Mom's death, I found the idea of being in church more than I could bear.  I'm not suggesting that my feelings were right, or wrong.  But I would be lying if I said my feelings were anything other than what they really were.  One of my life's challenges has always been to manage the degree to which my feelings run my life and behavior.  I feel things very intensely, and often act on my feelings when those feelings aren't necessarily pointing me in the right direction.  Still, when it came to the subject of worship and church attendance during the months after Mom died, my f...

This morning I happened upon a blog entitled, "You Went to a Funeral and then You Went Home."  It was a powerful blog, and spoke to the separation of experience and feelings between those of us who attend funerals, and those who are the closest loved ones of the person who has passed. As it happened, I went to a funeral today for the father of a very dear friend of mine: Pop.  Pop was more officially known as Conrad Corley, and his daughter has been a treasured and faithful friend to me for the past 23 years.  This was only the second funeral I've attended in the 4 years since my Mom passed away in 2010, and I was struck in both cases by the impact these men had on their families and all the people whose lives they touched.  I knew Pop, "Mr. Corley" to me, and my most enduring memory of him was his love for the Texas Rangers and his retirement job as a Ballpark Usher.  They shared today that his pay for ushering was probably less than what it cost him to get...

And so it begins! 2015 is off and rolling. Every year at this time I love the process of reflection that accompanies my personal celebration of the New Year's holiday. Perhaps I was born old, or simply born without a "party hardy" gene, but for whatever reason, I lean more toward the philosophical than the party animal, so I relish the chance to ponder what has passed in my life and what is yet to come.  It has been difficult this year to choose a topic for my New Year's blog.  I intended to blog on New Year's Eve...and then on New Year's Day...but there were so many things on my mind, nothing seemed just right to share, and I knew I had too many things on my mind to fit into a single blog.  For those of us who enjoy writing, choosing the limits of what we want to say is the most difficult task...and after that, editing down the length of content to that which will be of most interest to the reader.  I confess to being full to overflowing with words th...