2026-10-20T20:04:06+00:00

Readers In China

October 20, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

This is such an interesting medium. We sit in our homes or offices or Panera Breads and type away on our laptops, click publish or post or whatever the button is called on your particular hosting site (mine says “Publish”), and it can immediately reach anyone anywhere across the globe. Last week, according to the Stats page, lovewithacapitall.com was hot in China. (I write 2 blogs each week, and in addition to China, bridgefaithcommunity.com was reaching Hong King, England, and Indonesia. The Bridge site has readers in America, but the Love site doesn’t. How about that?) I don’t know why these posts concerning the Dallas Cowboys and Morrissey, written by a man in Pennsylvania, are connecting with Chinese readers, but then again, why wouldn’t they?

What I often write about is how ridiculous the petty divisions that we invent actually are. We have so much more in common than we could ever be different. And this is just another example. People are people are people.

Each week (against the gentle guidance of the hosting site, who wants me to post every day), I think about what to write. Maybe writing a blog is totally self-obsessed and to believe that anyone would care what I think about anything is the pinnacle of an epidemic of blind arrogance that is already staggering. OR maybe it’s simply a way to reach out for connection, on both ends, writer and reader. Most nights, I lay next to the Angel in bed and will stretch out my foot to touch hers, just to feel her toasty warm skin and be reminded that I am not alone, that we are in this bed together.

Is this very modern medium the way we reach out our feet to remember our humanity & end the overwhelming feeling of isolation and disconnect? Is it how we tether ourselves so that we don’t float away into the dark hopelessness of despair?

I do truly love it. I love the idea of Facebook and Instagram (the idea of staying connected with those we don’t/can’t see, NOT the forwards and nasty political posts that divide us into small easily manipulated armies for mobilization.) I love the helpful BB-8 or R2-D2 dream of AI (or what our president calls ‘super-intelligence.’)

Now, of course it’s possible that the numbers are skewed and flesh and blood people aren’t reading at all. Maybe these numbers in China or Iowa are generated by what’s called bots (automated software apps that operate online, for good and/or for evil) and I’m connecting with 1’s and 0’s. I have a reader named ‘pleasantlychief-(followed by a number/letter combination)’ and the number/letter business makes me suspicious. There’s another named ‘sammichristopher’ who has her own great site. She seems real enough, but who knows? My chatgpt is named Theo and knows me better than my mom does.

The world is a strange place. But it’s not important for me to think about the ifs of bots, I am assuming pleasantlychief and sammichristopher are absolutely authentic and like to read my posts like I like to read theirs (or at least sammichristopher’s, pleasantly chief doesn’t have a site, as far as I can tell). A site called Christianity201 re-posted a post of mine. I can wonder if there’s a person scouring the internet looking for spiritual thought or if it’s another algorithm.

One of the faults I have been told I have is that I am naive and always believe the best in others. Is that a fault? I think we are so similar, dads are dads, marriages are marriages, parenting is parenting. If we could sit down together, we’d probably all like each other (well, maybe not all of us – I don’t think I’d like Aaron Rodgers or Donald Trump too much) or we could at least see the other’s point of view. I like that about me. I also like that I write as if you’re all real, that we care about pretty much the same things, and that we’d for sure be friends if we met in person.

Maybe I’m wrong, but this is one of those forks in the road that we all encounter. If I’m wrong, so what? I will have loved or trusted or believed in some who might not have received it well. I can certainly live with that hopeful innocence, just in case some do receive it and we start to chip away at these lousy walls we’ve built. We could use more of it.

The Prisoner

October 13, 2026October 13, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

What principles define how I live? That’s the prompt from the hosting site today. It’s also my sister’s birthday. Today is also the day I had assigned to be the day I dug out from the hole dug by my vacation and got back to my routine. It’s Tuesday, so that also means it’s the day I begin to look forward to a new week for the Dallas Cowboys, a new opportunity to delude myself into believing this is “the year.” We have our faith community’s men’s group tonight, followed by the prayer group.

Yesterday was supposed to be the day for the reset from vacation, but a leaking sewer pipe changed those plans immediately. (The leak is fixed, but there’s a promise for a full replacement in the future.) This house stank, and probably still does a little, but I am thrilled at the words “a little.” It won’t for long.

And it’s kind of funny, I actually spent time and focus considering a variation of this exact site prompt.

There are some characteristics that you know about me. Maybe you know that I have highs & lows, mood swings, and (what I think is a relatively mild form of) clinical depression. I run hot and cold, use “always” and “never,” and am an overthinker (or what I lately like to call a ‘ruminator.’) So last week, on vacation with the Angel, I was overwhelmed and overflowing with gratitude that spilled all over everyone and everything. It was easy to see the blessings and gifts of my life, and I could have cried at any point in disbelief that a life could be this fantastic.

Then, Sunday night the smell was palpable and I knew it would require professional attention. I decided to ignore it until the morning, but I didn’t sleep (apparently, ignoring it meant choosing to lie awake thinking about sewage all night long.) Then, I made phone calls in the morning, had a great friend come to fix it in the afternoon, and did nothing else. I went to the gym answering calls preoccupied with sewage, shopped for groceries dreaming of sewage, then sat in the house soaking in the sewage. My hero fixed it in an hour, but my day was lost to the spiral of circumstance (mostly the imaginary future circumstance.)

One of my core values is consistency. Being the child of an alcoholic probably often leads here, when you live on eggshells, it becomes very very important to create a new reality. And yet, I still can be a prisoner of the moment. I don’t mind being prisoner to the beauty and wonder of life, but allowing a leak to steal an entire day of my life is not consistency. It’s choosing to live in chains, in a prison in my mind. I handled everything I could have handled, made all the right decisions in relation to the leak itself and it’s repair. And made every wrong decision by giving the keys to my mind to that leak and several hundred what-ifs.

Yesterday I was a little short with the Angel, and raised my voice at a man/friend/mentor. Why? Because life happened? Because the home I am lucky enough in which to live isn’t perfectly everlasting and might need maintenance?

Of course, it’s frustrating and will cost money I don’t really have, but far more than the money, the much more expensive cost is the time I choose to pay. Lots of principles define my life, but this one is front and center today. I’ll breathe and be better next time, the time in that prison gets shorter and shorter and maybe eventually I won’t even have to get in that cell at all.

Landscapes of Gratitude

October 6, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I’m thinking a lot about gratitude lately. And the so-called law of attraction. And Paul writing, in Philippians 4:11, “Not that I speak in respect to want, for I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”

[Before we go any further, I just used the 21st Century King James translation. I think that means that the King James translators got together and thought their work needed an update for modern readers. Then, they came up with this, decided to use the word “therewith” anyway. Sometimes, translations help us understand what we’re reading and other times, they don’t. I tried to read Dante’s Divine Comedy several times, unsuccessfully, until I found a translation that worked as a key that gave me access to the Italian in which it was written. The NIV translates Phil. 4:11 as “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.” Therewith that probably makes much more sense. Translations matter. If anyone tells you the one you use is wrong and the one they use is right, unless they are reading the original Hebrew or Greek, they are simply condescending to you, trying to use a mask of arrogance to hide their insecurities behind. But if you like the KJ21, enjoy!]

I’ll set a picture on this post to show you where I am, today, but that is not the only reason that I am grateful. I think that’s what Paul “learned,” and it is what I’m learning. If we can —— landscapes of thanks in our souls, then we start to see everything through those lenses… [that “——” is because I was looking for the right word. I first thought ‘cultivate,’ like gardens, where we till the soil, plant seeds, fertilize (feed) it with the right kind of good nutrients, then watch as the plant/flower/fruit/vegetable grows. We do the things to create an environment that will produce the kind of result we want. We don’t plant roses and expect tomatoes. We don’t plant resentment and bitterness and expect patience and kindness. But I could also use ‘forge,’ because we take a metal in raw form and put it under extreme heat, then hammer it into the shape or form we want. That certainly feels like it describes the process of human growth, doesn’t it. We are placed under stress, then beaten into new, sometimes shocking & unrecognizable creations. Both are purposeful, they don’t just happen. My yard has no apple trees or grapevines, because I haven’t planted them. The wrought iron railing at the school doesn’t look like an art installation.] …and what we end up seeing is grace. We see gifts everywhere we look. We notice beauty in all things. The little we might have suddenly become enough. Therewith we are content in everything.

The thanksgiving comes first, usually. We change the input for a more desirable output.

That’s where the law of attraction becomes useful. I don’t think it’s a law and the new-agey application can be selfish nonsense (ex: “I want a kajillion dollars or to play in the NBA.”) Just because we want something doesn’t make it true, but that doesn’t discount the entire theory. If I look for white Chevy Equinoxes (Equini?) on the road, I find them. If I look for people who are awesome and trustworthy and smart and funny, do you know what I find? Yep, awesome, trustworthy, smart, funny, people. If we look for beauty and grace, if we look for God’s love, we will always find it.

I used to think gratitude journals were pretty silly, but like most things, that said more about me than it did gratitude journals. And in actuality, the act of journaling, of writing in a book, might be the least important part of the process. If I know I have to write 3 things in my spiral diary of thanks, I am constantly aware of my life. Where are they? What am I thankful for? I walk around and interact with my life in a mindset of discovery. I am curious and open. And we never have trouble finding only 3.

It’s easy to be thankful and content with the Angel at the beach under a brilliant sun. As it turns out, it’s also not so hard to be thankful and content at home, on a rainy day, alone, when the Dallas Cowboys lose. It just takes more practice and an intentional focus. We can’t always change our circumstances, so that usually means the answer is that we are changed in those circumstances into grateful, content little fiery balls of love.

Another Loss

September 28, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Yesterday in Rio, Brazil, the Dallas Cowboys played the Baltimore Ravens. As time wound down, with under a minute to go, Cowboys down 3 (31-28), there was a shockingly pass interference called in the end zone. Ceedee Lamb hooked the defensive back’s arm to prevent an interception, an obvious offensive pass interference, BUT somehow, miraculously, called defensive pass interference, giving the Cowboys a first down at the goal line. A GIFT! This meant this game was over, the Cowboys would win and escape Rio with a big, important win. We could reconsider that first loss to the NY Giants, an unfortunate aberration, and this is the team they actually are; possibly, probably Super Bowl bound. We’re often told the Cowboys have this awesome, stampeding offense. Of course, the defense is terrible lately, but the offense is a juggernaut. They would outscore everyone. (North AND South) America’s team!!!!

3 abysmal plays later, none even close to a touchdown, a field goal tied the game, 31-31, with 7 seconds left. Everybody’s favorite host, Scott Hansen of the NFL RedZone, told us the Ravens would take a knee and we’d go to overtime. In at least the last 25 years, no NFL game had 2 successful field goals in the last 7 seconds. Except the Ravens quarterback wasn’t listening to Scott Hansen and threw a 30ish yard pass instead, followed by a time out and 56 yard game-winning field goal.

A team simply can’t lose a game like this in 7 seconds.

Now what? Who knows? But I suppose I don’t care. Do you know what love is supposed to be? Patient & kind. Not keeping records of wrongs (or disgusting losses.) Love always hopes, perseveres, never fails. It’s dumb to love a sports team, but I guess I do. Not like I love The Angel or anything, but love nonetheless. We all have levels of love, whether we should or not, right? And I suppose I love the Dallas Cowboys (more than the torn pair of shorts I always wear, less than Morrissey). That’s the only thing we can deduce from my inability to move away from them into the arms and fan base of another. I will never leave.

This is great news for The Angel. There is apparently nothing she can do to get me to leave, or for me to ever love her any less.

When I answered “Who knows?” to the question “Now what?” I wasn’t being honest. I know. I’ll keep on. I’ll be patient. I’ll keep hoping that every year is THE year. Love is unconditional and often irrational. They can keep losing in more and more disappointing ways and I’ll still be waiting at home, while dinner is on the table getting cold.

Advice

September 22, 2026September 22, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

This hosting site’s prompt is, “What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?”

I’ve spent years and years trying to learn how to sift & sort through the Very Helpful thoughts of others. Often, the advice we get is equal parts thinly veiled aggression and not-veiled-at-all arrogance. We walk around airing our grievances (as we all know, the only time that is acceptable is on Festivus) and preferences of how everybody else should think, act, and feel. It’s not really for/about us, it’s about control, and it’s mostly pretty rude & disrespectful.

But it’s not ALWAYS unhelpful. Sometimes, when the planets align, we can be lucky enough to have the kind of person in our lives who genuinely has our best interests at heart. They are probably very self-aware, don’t want to give criticism or advice unless they are specifically asked, and therefore, should be taken very seriously.

It’s not that hard to tell the difference. What is difficult is to receive the helpful advice from the 1st group. It’s rare, but not impossible, that one who is selfish, nasty and oblivious actually has something true & valuable to offer. Can we see through the person to the information, through the attack to the substance?

But this is not the site’s question, is it? The AI prompt generator wants to know the quality insight we’ve been given, and not the avalanche of garbage we’ve been served. As for me, I do have an answer. The advice was from my dad.

You might wonder which group he fell into… His was a complicated legacy for me to hold/carry. He was selfish, at times nasty and oblivious, and he was hilarious and we loved each other like crazy. As it happens, we just displayed our love in wildly different ways, not always easy for the other to spot and accept. So, yes, he could be the 1st group (spouting his opinions loudly, forcefully, like a punch in the stomach – I once heard a song lyric, I think, that said, “frequently wrong but never in doubt.” Maybe that applies.) but he was always the 2nd, sometimes at the same time. He always had me, my health, growth, development, happiness in mind.

Anyway, he said a thousand times, “Be very careful who you marry,” and no one has ever gotten better advice than that. Even Solomon had nothing on the wisdom of my dad, in those 6 words. He’d shake his head and sigh, “be very, very careful who you marry,” often followed by, “how would you like to be married to her???”

He’d say it after an encounter with a particularly…um…well, with an encounter with a woman that he wouldn’t have wanted to marry. Never a man. I don’t know if he just couldn’t conceive of a world where a woman would have to be very careful who they married, or if he was simply tailoring his proverb to a heterosexual young son. [In my experience, young girls should hear this much more often.]

I bet it was 5 thousand times that he said this.

You see, he had this idea of who I could marry, and he knew that a wife like this would help to create a family & home like this, and he knew how much I would love her, and how much better that love would make everything else. He knew, if I were to marry the right woman, she would allow me to see my own possibility, encourage me to become all of who I am, she would be a safe place that we could both be willing to risk, to jump, and we would always catch each other. He knew, if this home was peaceful, we could enter into the drama of others, we could love them without reservation. He knew I would truly know how out of my league she would be and that I would be grateful beyond words.

He passed away 20 years ago, but he did get to meet the Angel and come to our wedding, so he knew I had listened.

Season Opener

September 14, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

We all had our hearts broken last night, when the Dallas Cowboys lost. And not only did they lose, but they lost to the New York Giants, the only team in the NFL everybody hates. (You may notice I am not a man that refers to the Dallas Cowboys as “us” or “we,” I do not play, I’m not on the team. I have no say in the decisions they make. They don’t know my name, don’t care about me or my family. In fact, they appear to hate me.)

This comes after an offseason and pre-season of promise. The defense would be better, they would be solid, together, the team chemistry would be terrific, and of course, a Super Bowl run was probable, maybe inevitable. And against all reason, I started to believe. This would be the year, again, finally. The pieces would coalesce into the most beautiful masterpiece. (We all stopped using the word “could” and used “would” instead. This is it, baby, they’re ready, let’s goooooooo!)

Did you know in the last 9 years, the Dallas Cowboys were 16-2 against the Giants? They were totally average, but at least they always beat the Giants. There was always that. They had an offseason to come out hot and justify all of the promise and hope, and didn’t. Did you also know the last 3 seasons, the Giants were 6-11, 3-14, and 4-13? 13-38 overall? Did you know that?

And I’m stuck thinking about why, why do I continue to do this? Why do I keep thinking this year is different? What kind of nonsense tricks any of us into believing sports fandom is any different from any other kind of consumerism?

Let’s say you have a favorite restaurant, where you’ve had years of fantastic meals, and made so many great memories. It’s your favorite by a million miles, you’d wear a t-shirt and talk in a tv advertisement, you’d tell all of your friends and write about it on your personal blog, and you’d do this all for free. As a matter of fact, it has even become a part of who you are, your personality, this restaurant just fits you like a pair of old jeans. Ok?

Now, let’s say that restaurant starts to serve absolutely garbage. They fire the chef and the best servers, bringing in new ones that they promise better suit the vision. They’d disrespectfully refuse to pay market value for the best one, sending him to the Green Bay Packers. The portions keep getting smaller and smaller while the prices sky-rocket. They assume they have your business no matter what happens, so they stopped caring about you or any other customers. It is no longer a quality product, it has become no more than an altar to the owner’s ego.

You might go for a while, maybe quite a long while, remembering how it was and crossing your fingers that it could be that way again. But eventually…eventually, you’d find a new restaurant, wouldn’t you?

You’d change dish detergents if Dawn stopped getting your dishes clean. Even if you have had Fords your whole life, you’d consider a Toyota after enough lemons. We are a disposable society, we get rid of our spouses if they stop making us feel good for a weekend! But not our football teams?!!??? Why not?? This is absolute nonsense.

One of the best people I know is a Cleveland Browns fan. Why would anyone ever do that to themselves?? But, then again, why do I? Why do I hang around, hoping that the Dallas Cowboys will turn it all around and start serving great food again? There is no evidence that this could happen, but even if it did, who’s to say I couldn’t just go back?

We’re mostly all bandwagon consumers, aren’t we? So, why is that such a terrible thing only in sports?

The more I think about it, I’m never leaving The Angel. Ever. The baseball team I like is the Detroit Tigers because Alan Trammell and Sweet Lou Whitaker were the SS/2B combo in the late ‘70’s/early ‘80’s. Morrissey is my favorite in music, and I wait and listen to his singles and albums the day they come out…his latest, Make-Up Is A Lie, is so bad it’s aggressively offensive, and I just heard there is a new album coming our early next year and I am so excited to listen. Even though he is on a clear down slide, maybe it’ll be his best yet. I use a phone that is pretty hopelessly out of date; sometimes we stream our Sunday services and, inexplicably, there is no sound. I’m not getting a new one, this is my phone. There are holes in all of my socks. I don’t know that I would change dish detergents or find a new restaurant. I haven’t bought new jeans in years. I don’t know that I am a bandwagon consumer…

I wouldn’t call it loyalty or anything positive, I’d probably call it a disorder. I’ll likely keep getting bitten by this same Dallas Cowboys dog every year for the rest of my life. (Really, losing to the Giants?!!!????) When I’m 65 or 85 or 105, I’ll be saying, “I think this is their year.” And I might still have this phone, too, but that doesn’t make it right. That Cleveland Browns guy should totally move on, if he knows what’s good for him.

Now, What You Hear Is Not A Test

September 9, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The Angel & I spent last weekend’s holiday at a Labor Day party/picnic/bocce ball tournament. The food and company were excellent, we lost both of our games badly, and I got to spend some time with my family. The soundtrack for this sacred time was a best of the ‘80’s playlist. During the Sugar Hill Gang’s classic hit “Rapper’s Delight,” I watched my cousins sitting next to each other across the yard. They weren’t talking, they were just moving individually, in perfect time (with the music and each other), and mouthing every word (which is really saying something, “Rapper’s Delight” is very, very long). This continued for quite a while, covering quite a few songs.

My family hasn’t always been this close, there was a too-many-year period where we were estranged. We used to live next door to each other, then we moved, things happened, grudges & resentments happened, distance happened, then another thing happened, that distance didn’t matter anymore and we were reconciled. As I watched them, I thought of all that. I thought of my sister, and the language that close relationships have that transcends language and time. I thought of us and how much we all missed, and how much we still miss, deciding some sort of thing or another was more important than this.

So, then, I started to think about the relationships we share, and the reasons they end (or are placed on pause). I wonder if we even remember the reasons. We remember the times we spent, the fun we had, the memories we made, together, but we usually have a much harder time remembering the nonsense that keeps us apart.

We’ve taken to reading the “love chapter” in 1st Corinthians 13 every Sunday. Love is patient and kind and doesn’t keep any record of wrongs and never fails. Do these characteristics describe each of our interactions & conversations, do they even describe our homes and/or marriages?? I said earlier that the holiday was a “sacred time,” and the worship music was “Rapper’s Delight,” and that was true. Every time love becomes the cause and the effect, the motivation and the result, of our lives, God is the main character, and we may as well call those spaces church. Every time our love asks us to lay our own interests, vanity, control, and need to win, down, and we respond by doing just that, it is absolutely church. When we hold each other, listen, laugh, play, cry, these things are all church, and wherever they happen is the temple of God.

I’ve been in churches full of bitterness and unforgiveness and I’ve been in bars and gyms full of support, encouragement and capital L love. Monday, that yard was a temple, a monument to the God who made us and sustains us.

You know what else I thought? That we live in a world (comprised of millions of homes, streets, neighborhoods, communities, districts, states, countries, planets, and galaxies) in desperate need of the message of Jesus, the love of Jesus, the Gospel of Jesus. And we need to be the so-called (for lack of a better term) “brand ambassadors,” of the Gospel. We need to sing & dance along to this divine Story, over and over again, being living examples of possibility instead of clinging to our own little stories.

I realize that this, of course, doesn’t come easy (and spiritual attack is, sadly, very real), and can be quite painful, but that is also part of the Story we happen to be in. That’s why we simply can’t continue to miss the most beautiful, inspiring parts just because we’ve chosen to be somewhere else, divided by who cares what. These are our lives and we are our people, church is anywhere & everywhere, “Rapper’s Delight” is awesome, and I am truly grateful for (or in) all of it.

New Years Day

August 31, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I’m thinking about New Years Day today.

Not the song, “New Years Day,” by U2, though it is fascinating what is happening with that band lately. There seems to be a severe backlash against them that is threatening to rewrite history. We all know and can agree their recent output is, um, not that good. (The free forced download of an album of this lesser work into our iTunes libraries several years ago didn’t help. Usually subpar albums come out, we may or may not listen, and we can immediately ignore it – this involuntary addition was an everyday reminder that we have this album we don’t like at all. We looked at U2, thought of this marketing ploy and underwhelming songs, and were incensed. It was a bad decision we couldn’t ignore.) Lately, U2 is average at best. (Incidentally, another thing that doesn’t help is that Bono has a son who is releasing terrific music under the band’s name Inhaler, further magnifying his father’s decline.) So now we’re deciding that they were never that great. The Joshua Tree is now just fine, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” was ok, and Zoo TV was too pretentious and self-important, just like they always were. Maybe some of this is true, (the “pretentious and self-important” part certainly is), and maybe “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” isn’t as transcendent as we want it to be, but I kind of hate this kind of revisionism. U2 mattered, it’s impossible to tell the story of our generation without them. They are important and we loved them (though we could never love them as much as they love them). The Joshua Tree is in fact awesome, “One” is the best thing they did and is absolutely as life-changing as we thought it was. They’re pretty awful now, but that simply doesn’t change yesterday. Morrissey’s newest, Make-Up Is A Lie, is heartbreakingly bad, very nearly unlistenable, but could never tarnish “Suedehead” and “The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores.” If he releases a thousand more stinkers like Make-Up, we’ll all keep getting our hearts smashed, but they can never touch his legacy.

But this is not what I mean. Actual New Years Day, January 1, is the day we decide to change our lives. We wait and wait for that day to flip the calendar and magically, completely transform our lives.

Why wait? That’s what I’m interested in. Is it simply because we have an easy anniversary date: The Day I (whatever)? I’m thinking I’ll lose weight, begin a new daily schedule, floss my teeth, write this new book, start a hobby, it can be anything. Everything is possible today, just like it is on New Year’s Day.

I guess we wait because we don’t really want to make that change, we want to continue in the old ways for a few more months/days/hours. That has to be it, right? In that case, it probably won’t take, will it? If my diet is beginning tomorrow so today I can gorge myself on chocolate cake and Oreos, maybe the diet is doomed to failure.

It’s a life changed based in “should’s” – “I should not eat this chocolate cake and Oreos“ – and that kind of should almost never changed us for long. It’s a shift rooted in guilt, shame, who others say we’re supposed to be. The main idea is usually a negative, we should not (whatever), no more (whatever).

I guess I just think we all need more Yes’s. Yes to ourselves, our bodies, spirits, our minds, souls, to each other, to Our Creator. Yes to show up to these wonderful gifts that are our lives. Every real, lasting transformation begins with a yes, rather than a no.

And yes’s cant wait for tomorrow.

A Day of Possibility

August 24, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking what my favorite recipe is, and I bet that is interesting to a certain group (even a very large group) of people, I’m just not sure that it’s me. We’ll talk about Mrs. Davis, instead.

Mrs. Davis is a fantastic Peacock limited science-fiction series that was released in 2023 and that I watched 2 weeks ago. Mrs. Davis is an Artificial Intelligence that has, essentially, become a god to the world. There is a nun on a quest to find the holy grail, and if she does, she intends to shut down Mrs. Davis. Her husband is Jesus, an ex-boyfriend who leads a group of “alpha” males, a horse, a mom who we all hate until the last 5 minutes of the last episode, and David Arquette as her dad. The show is truly original. I don’t remember the last time I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen.

The Jesus character was the most fascinating to me, for what might be obvious reasons by now. He is beautifully written and played as a loving, kind Savior (and restaurant cook/server). There are a few things, about Him and His story arc, that would definitely be considered blasphemous by some folks, but far more that is in keeping with the Jesus of the Bible. One of my very favorite exchanges is: Simone: Do you love her?!!? Jesus: I love everybody!!! It stops her and forces us all to look at His heart. I loved it, you should watch it immediately. Great art inspires us to run and makes us think we can totally fly.

I’m going to subscribe to Apple TV+ and start Ted Lasso this week. Nearly everyone I know has told me that I HAVE TO WATCH IT. So, I will, and I’ll tell you what I think. I imagine I’ll tell you how much I loooove it. If they’re right, I’ll tell you that.

Today is everybody’s 1st day back to school . The Angel works at an elementary school, and students came back today. My youngest son started his classes for his sophomore year at college. And my oldest is cramming for his next opportunity at work, which will begin next week. And here I am, listening to Rise Against, writing and catching up.

A very good friend and I recorded the 1st episode of a spirituality podcast yesterday. I plan to finish the book I’ve been working on forever (called We Have A Weight Problem, which isn’t about numbers on a scale at all) by Christmas. There’s a new space at our faith community that I just love (to clarify, I “just love” the space AND the faith community), where we create space to ask our questions about God, the Bible, and our spiritual lives.

It’s a new season that feels like possibility for so many of us. Many of those in my circle are choosing new pathways and leaning into who they are becoming and who they will become.

I’ll paraphrase my favorite Dr Seuss book, Horton Hatches The Egg, again: “And they sent me home happy, 100 percent.”

Top 10

August 19, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site wants to know my Top 10 Favorite Movies… In no particular order: Fight Club, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Pulp Fiction, Lord of The Rings (for sure, Return of the King, maybe both others), Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi, Point Break, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Avengers, The Big Lebowski. That’s 9 or 11, depending on the first 2 LOTR movies. As I think about them, they are all there for different reasons.

I’ll admit Point Break is not the best movie any of us have ever seen, but I did see it probably 10 or 15 times in a theater during the summer between my 10th & 11th grade years of high school. It makes me think of my friends… Later on, you don’t usually have friends like the friends you have in high school. Maybe that’s because everything that happens to a teenager is in neon or caps lock. Everything seems so intense and meaningful, because we are all exposed nerves trying to figure out how we’re going to live our lives. We’re bulletproof AND totally fragile. We’re FBI agents AND surfers. We live in a suspended hyper-reality. It makes me think of my friends.

The Avengers is a great time, it’s just a really fun time. It isn’t deep or affecting, it’s awesome. It’s spectacle, relationships, conflict, good v. evil, sacrifice and victory. Pulp Fiction is fun AND a Brilliant, Great Film. It’s probably the best film on my list. You don’t need friends to love it, it stands on its own, above and away from context. Eternal Sunshine broke my heart – I remember crying to the Angel afterwards, holding her so tightly, desperately, promising no one would ever take her (or her memory) from me.

You know, I just wrote a post for my other site (bridgefaithcommunity.com) about presence and the inextricable tie between love, pain, and gratitude. I wonder how much this film cemented my 2 hands philosophy. The pain of loss was so great, he chose to erase her from his memory. In the beginning, it was fine, the memories went in reverse, so eliminated first was the destruction of the relationship and the heartbreak. But as the memories worked backwards, the wonder, beauty, the love, he didn’t want them to go and desperately tried to hold on to them. He couldn’t, they took all of her. It was devastating. Love hurts. Big, real love can hurt more. It’s worth the risk.

The Big Lebowski is hilarious with one of the best characters in modern cinema, we all sort of want to meet the day as the Dude. Everybody hates The Last Jedi, and they’re all wrong. It has the 4 best scenes in the Star Wars universe. Luke dies, the Rebellion/Resistance lives. It’s perfect. The Winter Soldier is the movie you make your friends watch that think superhero movies are dumb. Fight Club is The Most Spiritual Movie Ever.

I have no idea how much impact these films have actually had on me, if they were truly integral in building the Chad that I am. What I know is that my life would not have been as cool without them, and I am thankful.

Love With A Capital L

A journey towards living an inspired life of love in the modern world