Vulnerability: Equal Parts Giving and Receiving
Dave, a friend of mine, responded to me about my post on Men’s Vulnerability Group and I thought it was worth re-posting some of it. I have begun to realize and set aside all forms…
Men’s Vulnerability Group And How I’m Learning About Vulnerability
Based on a few conversations with some great counselor friends, we at theStory have started a group which we call Men’s Vulnerability Group. The idea for the group started because of the realization that community…
Rejection Is An Assault On Our Humanity
Why do we hate to be rejected? Why does it hurt? Rejection is nothing more than a cognitive disposition towards someone. It’s just how someone thinks about you. In order for rejection to be effective,…
Being Friend’s With External Processors
I am an external processor. This means that I think out loud. This blog is a great example of how my personality works. When I have an idea, the very act of writing it down…
Anger Means So Much More Than Angry
When someone gets angry we should never take it at face value. I’ve learned this a number of ways. I learned it first in experiencing people’s anger with my blog posts. I’ll say something like…
In Support of Non-Violence that Looks Like Violence
A little while ago I was asking if maybe violence was necessary sometimes. For myself, I still take a perspective of non-violence is a discipline and direction that I want to live my life, but…
A Sermon on Potlucks And Sharing Meals
Potlucks is the oldest and most consistent tradition that we have at theStory. From our very first meeting as a community, we met in each other’s homes and ate together. The importance of such a…
The Universe Is Made Up Of Stories
This excerpt is from Sapiens: Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in peoples…
Guilt and Empathy Are Both Attempts For Connection
Guilt and empathy are not two things that you would normally think would go together. But I’ve been thinking lately of their connection on two different levels. The first is that empathetic people generally are…
The Stories We Tell Ourselves And What Drives Us To Action
One of the aims of November was to ask ourselves the question of “now what” in regards to some of the current issues around us. The one’s I suggested to the lead team were the…
Simple Belief Systems Should Be Affirmed
Humans have this need to summarize and simplify our belief system. When you ask people what they believe in, at the core of their being, you get very concise answers. You hear things like God,…
Is True Consciousness Possible When You Hold Onto Faith?
Faith by it’s very nature is a choice to hold to something that cannot be proven. It is a choice of hope despite the lack of evidence that any exists or does not exist. Those…
Does Church Shape Us, Or Do we Shape The Church?
One of the things I’ve grown passionate about with our church is to really spell out and communicate our church practices. As it is these types of practices form us into certain kinds of people….
Nihilism vs Faith
When you allow yourself to explore all philosophical and religious angles, you will come face to face with the world of nihilism. And after exploring all the different options, nihilism becomes quite attractive because it…
Sheltered Workshops Fulfills a Need
I wrote this because organizations like Wawanosh Enterprises should be defended on issues like this. Turning a service like this into a political and economic issue hurts everyone involved. It ends up becoming about making…
Dallas and Celeste
A few years back, this guy with big, dark rimmed glasses sat in our church with his friends. One year later, he sat quietly in a living room in Saskatoon across from me. At some…
A Perfect Example of Why The Sarnia Observer Needs To Die
It’s a nice Sunday afternoon, I’m reading through the news. An insane image shows up of a man on fire on the front page of the Observer forty minutes ago with the headline “Flames at…
Rooted: A Sermon On Staying
Communities have different ways of remembering who they are and where they came from. For instance the wider church community throughout the entire world remembers this through the scriptures. Countries have constitutions. Businesses have logos…
Staying
Without roots of love, we easily become slaves to our own desires, using the place where we happen to be as a staging ground for our ambitions and manipulating the people around us so they…
Voting Federally in Sarnia-Lambton in 2015 (I Guess I’m Voting After All)
My political leanings vary daily. I read anarchist literature for fun. I’m currently reading Che Guevara’s biography. My religious leanings side heavily with those of the Christian anarchists and liberation theologians and anti-colonial thinkers and…