December 17, 2010. 11:00 AM. Scranton, PA. It’s 8 days before Christmas. Roughly two weeks before the end of the year. I’m sitting in my office, typing away on my laptop, coffee mug on the warmer plate, listening to the hum of my aquarium filter as my fish swim back and forth in their tank.…

A long time...a lifetime....ago, a piece of spoken word poetry wormed its way into my heart. Not the whole piece, just one line, but it’s stuck with me for decades now.  “To be seen is to be known, and to be known is to be loved, and you see me. You SEE me.”  That line. …

I had my first full-blown, PTSD/Anxiety induced panic attack in several years yesterday.I mean, I had one after my accident in February, but that was mainly because I hit my head so hard I didn't know where I was or what was happening, and I was in such severe pain that I hyperventilated.No, yesterday was…

On the northeast tip of North America, on an island called Newfoundland, there’s an airport.  It used to be one of the biggest airports in the world. And next to it is a town called Gander. They have a two person police department, an SPCA, an elementary school, and a culture of kindness that, in…

A couple of weeks ago, I got a text from our minister -- she had a nasty cold and couldn't talk. So she asked if I would cover the service the next day.  This is that "quick and dirty" sermon. Sometimes, those are the ones that force me to think the most about the topics…

I will never forget the day I was hit with the realization that my body had betrayed me. It was an afternoon last October, when I stood, looking at the stage at HMAC, and realized that I couldn’t climb the 5 steps to get onto it without falling over, because there was no handrail and…

I was 17 years old when I discovered Gandhi. I had just graduated from High School and was spending the summer before I went to college working as the assistant head counselor at a religious summer camp in central Ohio. One of our international exchange staff was from Brussels, and he had a tattoo on…

I don’t know what was different this time. I have been doing the homeless census for over 10 years now, so I knew what to expect -- but last week felt…different. Maybe it was the rainy weather? The gloomy undercurrent of the government shutdown? The sheer number of people we found in cars and in…

15 hours and 42 minutes of darkness. It is the longest night of the year. And on this, the darkest of nights, we gather to remember those who have no homes . The majority of us will never know what it is like to not have a safe, secure place to call our own. Unfortunately,…