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.

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.

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.”

Slip

August 10, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, I watched a show called Slip. (This show seems to have originally aired on Roku, I watched it on Peacock.) It’s weird and quirky – if I were to describe it here, you could only infer that I really loved it. It is everything I look for in art, a new perspective that is challenging and deep and speaks to my own life. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 100%. It must have been awesome. But I’m not sure I did love it.

There’s a married woman, Mae, who “slips” into parallel worlds (I guess it’s not that weird to us, we understand this from the MCU and it’s multiversal phase), where she has different lives, different marriages, partners, habits and values. The woman (Zoe Lister-Jones, who created, wrote, directed & starred) has something to learn (about life, in general, maybe, but certainly about her life) and she does. Lister-Jones is wildly talented. In episode 7, she even sings a version of “Every Breath You Take” that will stop you and bring you to tears. It still sounds like I loved it. I wonder if I did.

A website called Den of Geek writes, “Essentially, the mystery points back to the exhibit in the pilot, where Mae tells us about the Hungry Ghost. She says they are beings living in six different realms of existence in a state of chronic deprivation and longing. They crave nourishment (both literally and figuratively), but they’re incapable of digesting it. This perfectly symbolizes Mae’s journey: no matter what alternate reality she’s in (with multiple different versions of who she could be), she’s unequipped to find peace and acceptance without looking for a solution within herself. She has to face and address her own struggles and internal suffering head-on to find the kind of life that can make her happy.”

Maybe our culture makes sure we’re all always in a state of chronic deprivation and longing? What do we do when what we crave doesn’t provide the peace and acceptance we’re searching for, and we’re left with our own struggles and internal suffering? We don’t like to face things, especially our own emptiness and sense of meaninglessness – what if the “new” and “more” don’t fulfill? Then what? Probably, we keep walking the same paths “new” and “more,” keeping the noise loud and fast so we can’t hear our hearts break.

I may spoil it here, so beware…Her original, episode 1 life was simple and what can look like what we are sometimes told is the boring monotony of commitment. But it was that relationship that she sought the rest of the journey, and to which she eventually returned. This was fairly surprising. Hollywood has a very hard time showing the beauty of a connected marriage, after the peaks and above the valleys, once we settle into real life. Maybe Lister-Jones isn’t married, but I’m guessing she is, and I suspect she might be very happy and full. She says to her husband, “we weren’t perfect, but we were a team and there was a lot of love and support.” That’s every marriage. It’s a lie that passion and spontaneity and surprise doesn’t happen in long, loving marriages. The passion is deeper and weighs so much more without any superficiality. And as we each grow and change, we are never without surprise, it’s just that we stop looking, listening, and learning. “More” and “new” might seem cool, but we end up just looking to slip into something more substantial.

Still, it sounds like I loved it, and I keep thinking that might not be accurate. Why? Why can’t I just say it? I want to say “it’s complicated,” but the more I consider, it’s not too complicated at all. I watched a show that was interesting – I thought about BIG spiritual concepts, about meaning and purpose, it made me think of The Angel, and a million other things. This show has me thinking about it the next day and might for a while. Of course, I loved it.

Stables

July 27, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

[This post is also on the Bridge Faith Community site, but I want to post it here, too. Maybe I’ll write a different one, exclusive to this site, later, or tomorrow or Friday. Maybe I won’t. I think this one is what I want to say, and all I want to say, today. It’s just my raw, open heart on the screen. You’ll like it or you won’t, but what I always hope is that it might mean something to you. The best things leave us different than when we started. The things I write about in this post have left me a very different man.]

Sometimes, I reference the writing prompt that the hosting website suggests. They can be interesting and thought-provoking, they’ve even been so good that I abandon the initial reason I opened this computer to discuss the site’s question. Today, it’s “If you could bring back 1 dinosaur, which one would it be?” They are not all interesting.

In our service last Sunday, I brought up the many prayer requests in our circle. Our individual circles are huge, because we are all so cool. In a Venn diagram, the overlap is the Bridge, but the way I figure, that connects each of the circles to each of us. We are all ‘members’ of the Bridge family.

But some people drift closer to the shaded, shared section. Our close friends have close friends that become our friends, too. One of those friends, a super-sweet man we all knew from a yearly party, (it would have been impossible not to notice him, know him, remember him, and be affected by him, even seeing him on such an infrequent basis), passed away suddenly, at far too young an age, last week. It hurts and leaves a deep wound that will become an obvious scar that we carry forever.

There are many others, who sit near the overlap, who are in need of prayer, struggling through medical procedures, surgeries, distance, isolation, and on and on. For a small community, we have these beautifully massive pools in which we each, in which we all, swim. These pools carry great joy, fulfillment, celebration. But they also carry pain. We get to go to the best parties, and the most crushing funerals. We get the phone calls for very good – and very bad – news. The weight is heavy and seems overwhelming.

Proverbs 14:4 says, “An empty stable stays clean, but no income comes from an empty stable.”

In times like this, when our friend is gone, we might really like an empty stable. Or at least one that’s not quite so full. Right? A prayer list where I don’t have to turn the page to continue.

We’ve all thought it’s better to not have loved, than faced the devastation of love lost. In that moment, in this moment, we might make the trade.

There’s a BRILLIANT science-fiction movie where a man chooses to have his ex-girlfriend erased from his memory, the suffering is simply too painful for him to bear. Most of the film takes place in his mind, as she is being eliminated. It unfolds in reverse, the first memories to go were the ones from the end of the relationship, and they seem to be easy to bid farewell. But as we move backwards, the beauty, the intensity, the meaning, the love… they go, too, and he decides that the empty stable he thought he wanted has a cost that is way too high. He begins to fight to keep the memories, fights to keep her, in his mind and his life.

This makes me think about our friend, and the very good friend who brought him into our lives. She is awesome, and you can see his fingerprints all over her life. She is a better person in every way because he was there. The income that came from her dirty pen is impossible to calculate.

I was thinking of this friend this morning while I was thinking of my son. He goes back to college in about 3-ish weeks, and even now, I’m seeing my screen through watery eyes and a very real pain in my heart. He considered an internship which would have kept him away for the summer, but he was here, instead, and now I get to send him off to school again, for the 2nd time. Maybe it would have been easier if he had not come home for these 3 months. Maybe.

Maybe an empty stable is clean, with less texture, less laughter, less hugs and gallons less tears. But the income is what makes life so wonderful. An empty stable has infinitely less beauty, too. And less passion, less love, less of everything that matters. My summer has been really fantastic, I haven’t missed it, I am deeply deeply grateful we are here.

My friend’s tears – and mine and yours – from her circles are really offerings of gratitude. The income is a full, awesome life. As Vision says in the WandaVision series, “what is grief but love persevering.” The pain my friend feels is directly proportional to the love they grew and experienced. If we’re blessed, very very blessed, we can know this terrible, beautiful pain. This is the gift and the curse of the Church, of a present life. We will be connected and full. We will have purpose. We will have hearts that are so big and soft you can see them from 100 miles away. And yes, we will hurt, mourn, and suffer. There’s never a way around the pain, only “through.” The thing about that, though, is the promise that we’ll have hands to hold and arms to fall into, for the “through.” And that is more than enough.

Lovemaxxing

July 15, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The hosting site, in their daily prompt, is wondering what bothers me and why. I have an answer, there is something that bothers me A LOT. I’ll tell you in a minute.

1st, let me tell you about a documentary I watched about incels, a relatively new term (what does “new” mean in a world in hyper speed?) describing “INvoluntary CELibates,” usually young male teens/adults. It’s disturbing and inextricably linked to another phenomenon/movement called looksmaxxing (the more X’s, the better, I guess.) This whole thing is about believing worth is tied to appearance, that women only want the most beautiful (i.e. not them), and that keeps them home, online, and fearing/hating women. It’s also tied to a thing I wrote about before called “the manosphere,” where cartoon-caricature macho males celebrate misogyny and their own thinly veiled insecurity. Looksmaxxing operates on a scale:

“The looksmaxxing scale, often referred to as the PSL scale (an acronym for either Pretty Scale Level or Perceived Sexual Market Value Scale), is a subjective, crowd-sourced 1-10 scoring system used in aesthetics-obsessed online communities. It evaluates physical attractiveness based on four core metrics: harmony, dimorphism, angularity, and miscellaneous features (such as skin clarity and eye color).

The Tier Breakdown. The scale translates to specific categories based on perceived genetic value and physical traits:

1–3 (Subhuman / Low-Tier Normie): Individuals with severe facial deformities or an “ordinary level of unattractiveness”.
4–6 (Normies): The vast majority of the population. People in this tier have average features with a mix of minor flaws and proportional benefits.
7–7.75 (Chadlite / Chad): Considerably above-average features, high facial symmetry, good dimorphism, and strong jawlines.
8–10 (True Adam / Gigachad): Extremely rare outliers who possess top-tier structural genetics.

“Chad” is a weird kind of idea, it’s mostly a term of derision based in envy. It’s also my name, which I may change to “Gigachad,” from now on. I wonder how the Angel will feel about that. I wonder how she feels being married to a “Chad.” I wonder if she knows I am apparently at the tippy top of the Perceived Sexual Market Value Scale.

I just want to point out that yes, you did read that there’s a category called “Subhuman.”

Some looksmaxxers try to jump categories by physically changing their looks by, for example, hitting their cheekbones with hammers until they become more Chad-like. I guess this type of focus, -maxxing, is what drives the plastic surgery industry, too. I wonder if it also is at the deepest roots of my Running post last week. Is any form of visual self-improvement (weightlifting, makeup, brushing our teeth, BBLs, hammering our faces, etc) -maxxing? Are they all attempts to outrun, or outmodify our own poor self-images?

I don’t think so. I don’t think running on a treadmill is the same as surgery (but maybe that’s because I run on a treadmill and haven’t had even one cosmetic procedure yet). However, I can see a through-line that will become my answer to this curious site.

Whether it’s advertising or social media, so much of a world who’s religion is consumerism is designed to make us (the consumers) feel a lack, which would need to be filled (through some sort of product). We are born and raised to feel a lack. We compare our real lives to the filtered, pretend lives on Instagram, then operate out of that false comparison to achieve the fictional lives on our screens. So, we’re inadequate, in some way, by cultural design. We think our value is found in the brands we wear, our mates, or our jawlines, and we move around wearing masks, afraid and hiding.

I believe the only cure for anything is love. We find our true identity and worth in God, Who loves us despite our puny biceps and our outdated phones, and that love so fills us that it comes out of our ears, eyes, hearts, and gets all over everybody else, without condition, whether they’re Chads or not.

What bothers me is that we don’t do that. What bothers me is that so many of us are missing something so deeply that we’d hit ourselves with hammers and watch dark-web domestic violence & murder, that we’d be embarrassed to even go outside because our faces aren’t dimorphic or angular enough, that we’d undergo such painful transformations just to try to correct the countless mistakes we think our Creator made with us. I’m bothered that we’re waging war, on others, on ourselves, instead of waging campaigns of love.

We should be lovemaxxing, and it bothers me that we’re not, yet. But I promise we will, and there’s no way we’ll stop until we do.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: Spirituality