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Get to? Or Have to? I think it was Bert and John Jacobs, in their book about their clothing brand Life is Good, who first flagged for me the fundamental difference in mindset that happens when we say we get to do something compared to when we say we have to do something. Think about…
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So I need to start by telling you about what I learned from the fly. The Cathedral of San Rufino in Assisi, Italy, was built in the 12th century, but the interior is a mishmash of styles, all beautiful and extravagant. Except, just to the left of the main altar, there is a tiny little…
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This is my favorite tree, and I took several photos of it, none of which do it justice. It’s in the middle of a well-manicured garden that was right outside our window. The trees around it are just like trees I would draw: straight line trunk, branches all straight at roughly the same acute angle,…
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Don’t let the sheer quantity here deceive you. I am not a writer. I mean, I write. It’s not that I’m illiterately dictating to people with laptops who encircle me. I write a lot, for work, in emails that are generally boring and longer than necessary. Not unlike here. But I have friends who are…
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My first reflection on what will be a very slow walk through John came during the Easter season, which is the time of year when the Church uses John as the gospel at mass. I had said then, at the beginning of this, that I don’t much like John’s gospel. So it surprised me a…
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When Betsy was an infant, I would sing Jiminy Cricket’s “When You Wish Upon a Star” to her as a lullaby each night. And (sometimes) the last line is right. Betsy has grown up at Walt Disney World, charming (as a toddler) and befriending (as a teenager) performers and other cast members and learning the…
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What is freedom, really? I have been mulling this after getting a haircut this week. As I listened to the story of the woman who cut my hair, what I got was a feeling of ultimate impermanence. She had been raised between two places, shuttling back and forth whenever her current parent lost their luster.…
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Is there a more poignant verse in the Bible than John 1:11? Especially in the Revised Standard Version. “He came to his own home, and his own people knew him not.” You know that image of returning home unremembered and unrecognized is poignant, because it shows up in movies so often. It’s a Wonderful Life,…
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I’m not a big fan of the Gospel of John. You’d think I would be, since nobody talks about love more than he does. But he’s also the most divisive of the gospel writers, and the most prone to poetry over storytelling. Plus he writes really, really long, profound thoughts, even though he uses small…
