Disease and divorce have given me more than a greater sense of mortality and frailty. They’ve taught me more about my solidarity with the human race than I ever learned in my former life. Up until recently I spent most of my white middle class male life with people that look and act pretty much …
Authentic Attention
The neighborhoods I frequent in order to make friends with God host many men and women who have long conversations with themselves and scream at invisible antagonists. Their minds are mush from birth, from abuse, from profuse amounts of inebriants, or all of the above. These are sinking shipwrecked humans with not much left of …
Our Loss, Their Gain
It’s likely that most people that I meet in the street assume that I’m just an old middle-class white guy who has had an easy life and that my faith just makes my smooth life smoother. (Not true. I’m not that “old”!) I think that beat-down people assume that Christianity only works for people whose …
It Takes A Breaking
Watchman Nee taught that the release of the inner man’s potential is contingent on the breaking of the outer man, which usually occurs through suffering. Compassion tends to seep out through the cracks created by hard blows and attaches itself to other damaged people. Our humanity-wide shared spiritual poverty is the lowest common denominator between …
Poor Enough To…
I’ve always liked the beggar-to-beggar definition of evangelism – “…one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.” Since I feel more beggarly than ever these days, I’m drawn to “my people,” not so much as an authority on God, but poor enough to reach other poor folks. Befriending the Lord’s beloved is no heroic …
barney wiget 