2024-05-16T13:24:59+00:00

The Elusive WHY

May 16, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking what is the oldest thing I’m wearing today. I have a pair of white Old Navy gym shorts that are easily 15 years old. They’re white so they always look vaguely dirty, but they fit well and I still like the way they look well enough.

I just got off the phone with a good friend, who filled me in on the happenings of her life, husband, mixed Brady Bunch family, ex-spouses, livestock, and in-laws. It’s a lot, messy and dramatic, just like the stories you & I would tell. She’s probably funnier than most of us are. But the interesting thing is that she wrapped up with the incredulous phrase, “this is exactly the life I wanted.”

Now, maybe tomorrow I’ll write about the importance of the peace in her marriage relationship, but today it’ll be her Why. When we have a clear why, a purpose for being/doing that explains all of this, it gives the focus and strength to endure almost any What.

So, what’s mine? What’s yours? In the Bible, Jesus asks a man, “What do you want me to do for you?” I wonder how we’d respond. Do we know what we want? Do we know who we are and what we’d ask for, if the one who could provide was standing in front of us? Do we have a Why we do the things we do? Maybe the Why isn’t great, and maybe today’s Why can’t really sustain and we need a new one for tomorrow & next week. But life gets pretty overwhelming sometimes, and things don’t make an awful lot of sense, it’s nice to have a rock to tie our pieces of string around so we don’t get lost.

One Small Step

May 13, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

What’s one small improvement you can make in your life? That’s the site prompt today, and probably deserves an answer.

I watched 2 documentaries and a movie this weekend. I’m still recovering from a cold that I am getting more and more resigned to carrying for the rest of my life. And it was raining, so it was a perfect weekend to climb under a blanket and watch something other than the NBA playoffs.

Finding Andrea is a 3 episode series following the disappearance of a woman in Kentucky who, incidentally, belonged to an organization that searched for (and was instrumental in finding) missing persons. She was complex, hiding the many facets of her life to the point that very few would claim to have actually known her. She died having lived a mostly dishonest, inauthentic life with lots & lots of secret compartments. She was probably killed by her sister and her boyfriend (at least that’s the implication I took from the doc). I don’t imagine we’ll ever know, because Andrea wasn’t the only one in the family who wasn’t interested in honesty. Her own dad would rather protect the possibly guilty daughter/boyfriend (who didn’t participate in the film) than be further torn apart by the truth. I guess I can’t blame him, who knows what I’d do in his place??

Max Joseph was a co-host of the Catfish TV show, and created a documentary called 15 Minutes of Shame with Monica Lewinsky. Lewinsky knows of what she speaks, as her life was torn apart by a series of very public poor decisions and behavior. This film looked at a guy who tried to sell and sanitizer at a ridiculous price during COVID, a woman who sent an ugly joke on Facebook and became the object of national scorn, and a man who was “cancelled” over a mistaken hand gesture in a company van. We think we know these people based on 1 small aspect of their personalities or an isolated incident, sometimes misunderstood, always without any shred of context. I don’t know Andrea’s dad, and to assume I know his motivations based on 2 or 3 clips is the height of arrogant condescension. Of course, he seems like something, the hand sanitizer guy seems like a scumbag, the woman seems heartlessly callous (as do the political pundits who condemned her). The hand gesture guy is obviously pretty silly, and the product of a culture gone power-crazy. But how do we actually know? I bet I seem all kinds of ways, based on extracted phrases in any one of these posts, or in overheard conversations at my dinner table.

The movie was My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and was absolutely as great as I remembered. It’s funny and feels good. But what’s notable is that no one is played as only a fool. Everyone acts like a fool at times, everyone is embarrassing in moments, but they all just seemed like “normal people.” Sort of. Admittedly, most are caricatures, but the caricatures leaned towards a positive, good nature rather than the mean, minimizing, debasing cartoons we are usually fed. I would guess that Ms. Vardalos sees the rest of us, sees “normal people,” through beautiful lenses that believe the best. I would guess that she likes us. That her idea of “abnormal” is abuse, betrayal, and violence. I believe the same.

We are made to walk together, to hold hands, and to love each other, and I’ll never be convinced otherwise. Maybe the shamed examples in 15 Minutes weren’t sorry they were caught as much as they were heartbroken they were led down a path so antithetical to their design. I thought the fiction of the movie was far closer to truth than the documentaries, because it showed the world in which I live, where the overwhelming majority are like you, trustworthy and awesome. Monsters exist, but in such small numbers, they stand out like neon signs at midnight. We’ve just bought lies for too long, choosing to acknowledge the missteps and failures as complete pictures, that we stopped seeing the beauty in each other.

I don’t know who Monica Lewinsky is, no matter how many pages I can read on the internet about her. And I’ll say the improvement I can make is to stop pretending I do.

Hellville

May 8, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

So, I watched the Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion documentary on Max last weekend. Brandy Melville is, apparently, a wildly popular clothing store for young-ish girls that I have never heard of. I don’t know how to feel about that. Of course, a middle-aged man (and I don’t know how to feel about that, either) maybe shouldn’t be too concerned with the fashion trends & habits of girls. There is an argument to be made that a middle-aged man maybe shouldn’t be too concerned with fashion trends & habits, at all, but whatever. I happen to like to be familiar with popular culture, as it is what we generally regard as our principal connector, and as I happen to like to connect, the popular culture is important to me.

Brandy Melville was created and operated by an older man named Stephan Marsan. Maybe that’s weird. The men are pretty creepy, sexist and racist, which is worse than weird, but if we knew who runs all of the companies we patronize, it might not be a collection of the best people in the world. This guy might not be such an exception.

The idea is that our clothes are disposable and our conscienceless consumption is unsustainable. In the service of providing them to us inexpensively, the supply chain is overflowing with slavery and human trafficking. This obviously isn’t only clothing, I’m typing on an iPad that’s production story would absolutely horrify us. And our phones and tvs and food and furniture. Everything probably has a similarly sordid path to our nameless big box retailer. And afterwards, we discard the old without thinking, and they end up in landfills or on, as this doc details, on the beaches of Ghana.

Why do we need so much? When will we finally see the manipulations of marketers/advertisers as the lies that they are? These solutions for modern life that we neeeeed will not fill our holes or our broken parts. They never did, they were never supposed to – it’s how they stay in business. If those jeans or that car did make us whole, we wouldn’t buy next season’s models, which would leave them all unemployed. The consumption is an issue, but not the one I am interested in today. The disposability is.

Everything in our culture is made with a shortened shelf-life. We use them today and throw them away when they no longer serve us, and get a new one. This is troubling when we’re talking about t-shirts, but exponentially more so when we begin to talk about people & relationships. The t-shirts are cheap, temporary, and we carry that to our commitments, friends and marriages. The second they stop serving us, making us feel a certain way, we toss them aside and get a new one.

I just don’t think this sort of perspective should be allowed to exist any longer, anywhere. Maybe 4 friends we’d die for are much, much better that 4,000 “friends” we barely know. Maybe 1 pair of jeans that’ll last for the rest of our lives is preferable to 8 or 10 to last the month. Instead of trading our partners in, maybe marriages should last, even after the excitement of falling in love fades. Maybe we all feel that we’re only as good as our last conversation or report, and maybe that’s causing us all to feel very, very anxious. Maybe that’s the birthplace of everybody’s increasing perfectionism.

Maybe not, of course, maybe it’s progress, and maybe I’m just hopelessly old-fashioned… Either way, I’m going to buy less cheap garbage and keep the Angel forever.

You Just Are.

April 29, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Here’s the first thing I read today (from Morning Brew): “In unsurprising news, middle school kids in Norway have been feeling mentally healthier and performing better academically since a public health initiative banned smartphones in schools, according to a new study. After three years of the policy, girls’ GPAs increased, while visits to mental health professionals decreased by 60%—and girls from lower-income families benefited the most. There wasn’t much effect on boys’ academic standings, but both boys and girls experienced 43%–46% less bullying after putting their phones away.”

And here’s the second (from Mark Manson’s newsletter): “We are often drawn to chaotic romantic partners because their chaos guarantees that we will feel needed…We can become insecure around stable romantic partners because we worry that they’ll never fully need us. And that’s because: they won’t.”

The first one is something we would call fairly obvious, right? Social media and screen time are behind any number of concerning effects. So, why will we not follow in Norway’s footsteps? And further, why do we need studies to make decisions to eliminate our phones in schools? Why wouldn’t we just choose to ban our own phones for hours, during the day? Why don’t we turn them off from time to time? We won’t, but studies like this make me ask why not.

The second is less apparent, maybe. I’ve often wondered why we stay in overly dramatic relationships, is it really as simple as our own insecurity? We’re not actually needed, chaos doesn’t require us, just more chaos. Drama doesn’t care what the drama is, or who is involved, as long as there is drama.

Now, is it possible they’re connected? If our phones are the new most important relationship in our lives, our de facto romantic partners, do we allow the chaos and damage they inflict, because they make us feel needed? We quickly, instinctually, reach when it beckons. Silence is evidence of loneliness, a lack of “likes” shows our irrelevance or unworthiness. I only exist if others see and comment. The internet is chaotic by nature, it doesn’t neeeed us, wouldn’t miss us if we unplugged, the ocean doesn’t care of we drown. Mental health is of no consequence to the machines in our hands. But that doesn’t mean we don’t believe we’re necessary, important, and valuable to their survival, especially the quality of their lives.

Your value isn’t tied to followers or subscribers. Or to your girlfriend or boyfriend, for that matter. All of this is based on lies that our performance is the most important thing about us, bringing us back to the first question we ask (and keep asking ever after): Am I good enough?

That answer is yes, no matter how crazy your life is or how many messages are in your inbox. You just are.

Face-Melters

April 22, 2024April 22, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

A session musician in the terrific documentary I watched yesterday (called Hired Gun) said he only plays on songs he likes. If he were to play on songs he hates, just for the paycheck, it would be a violation of his soul. Not only were they buying (renting) his skill on guitar, they were also buying everything that had ever gone into his development to get to this point. Every experience, every hour, every broken string, every ounce of sweat, disappointment, and joy. Every opportunity forgone in service of his passion & craft.

I am the pastor of a church, and when this faith community began, I promised I’d never take a salary. The lines between religion and commerce could not be crossed. To enmesh God and business is wildly offensive.

Now, here’s the problem with narrow, closed-minded thinking. On one hand, I was right. It IS offensive, having a sanctuary that exists for the merchandise table is gross. But on the other, always/never is pretty dangerous. Maybe it’s not always so disgusting. Maybe there’s a space between using offerings for private jets and closing the church doors because we can’t afford to keep the light on.

The other problem is promising, or saying, “I’d never ____,” is that sometimes, people and circumstances change. I worked full time (+ on call) delivering medical equipment, full time for the church, and much more than full time being a husband and daddy of 2. Either I suffer a painful, absolute break down (where I am not a full time anything), or something had to go. An adjustment had to be made, and that adjustment, if it was to continue the ministry we started in my living room, I would have to accept some kind of compensation.

I felt dirty for a long, long time. Then, I began officiating weddings. My first few I didn’t charge any money, accepting only what they’d put in cards handed to me as I left. Of course, this meant I did Saturday weddings away from my family for nothing at all except the beauty of the moment. These experiences were wonderful, but were they worth the cost? On my family, on my heart, on the church, on my mental/physical health, worth missing the people & things I missed?

So, I started to charge, I was always the cheapest option, and even then, always with a certain embarrassment. Some people wouldn’t pay before being asked several times. Once I had to ask up to, on the wedding day, and afterwards. Months later, my last message said, “I guess you won’t be addressing this (still too embarrassed to call it a “fee” or “payment”), so I won’t ask again.” Now, I get it before, but it’s never easy and never without the familiar, “I hate to ask this, but ____.”

Yes, familiar, but is it true? Do I honestly hate to ask? Can I love to do the thing and still charge to do it? Do you like your job? Would you do it for free? Is ministry different, in that regard? Paul writes in plenty of his letters that everybody, even ministers of the Gospel, should be paid for what they do, but the distance from our head to our heart can be very, very long.

I wrote a book on marriage that I believe could help everybody in the whole world. (Of course I do, why else would I write it? Well, I suppose also, like all art, because it’s on my heart and has to get out or I’ll never sleep again.) Yet, I apologize sheepishly for charging. Why do I do that? Because of that whole church-commerce separation, that’s why. I am not housing a fleet of Rolls Royces in my massive garage. I am not wearing suits that cost thousands of dollars. I drive a Focus with real transmission problems and wear thrift store sweaters. I’m not amassing an empire.

But I am trying to take a sledgehammer to all things that could separate anyone from the love of Jesus. And what separates us quicker and easier than greed & fortune in His name?

But that guitarist is absolutely right. He didn’t just roll out of bed today to play a face-melting solo in a vacuum. And neither did I (but a face-melting sermon, or wedding ceremony, in my case;). Everything I say on Sunday mornings or Tuesday evenings or Saturday nights was forged in middle school hell, and the grunge-ish band I was in, and my degree, and my issues, and my pain, and my family dynamics, and the times I had my heart broken, and the years I spent raging agains the machines of government and religion. My words come from hours and hours of study funneled through my unique perspective, that came from countless experiences, positive and negative. My ministry is a flaming ball of passion, life, divine gifts, and failures.

And so is yours. We’re all face-melters. My perspective is unique, but not in how it came about. We are not just slices of pie, we are pies. And to think we can have a bite without all that went into the creation of the whole is remarkably misguided. You became you in midnights and 4pms, in makes and misses, in sweats and suits, and you wouldn’t be you without all of them. And there’s enormous value in the school that produced you – it’s a priceless process and we wouldn’t have the joy of me or you any other way.

I appreciate that guy. I don’t know his name, and that’s sort of the point of the doc, but I’ll remember him forever. In fact, I’m going to double my prices, starting today. Ok, maybe tomorrow, but they’re going up.

A Heartbreaking Disappointment

March 25, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

For Christmas, the past several years, I’ve taken my son to an NBA basketball game. We live in Pennsylvania, so we go to a game when the 76ers play the Dallas Mavericks.The Mavericks are his favorite team because Luka Doncic is his favorite player by a mile. Last Christmas, I thought it would be amazing to take him to Dallas (his first flight) to see them at their home arena, to play a team other than the 76ers – in this case, Steph Curry & the Golden State Warriors. This was a bigger decision than it might sound, because we can’t exactly afford a flight, hotel, car, and game, but sometimes paying for a debt all year is absolutely worth it. The game is next week, and the season has gone in a direction for both that makes it a very big game. How exciting, right?

Well, apparently the Dallas Mavericks and/or the NBA thought so, too, so they rescheduled the game. The first, the one I bought and gave as Christmas gift, was Tuesday, April 2, Warriors AT Mavericks. Yesterday, I received confirmation for my tickets: Friday, April 5, Warriors at Mavericks. Tuesday, the Mavericks are now going to Golden State. My game tickets are still good, the game has just been moved. Just.

Sometimes, NFL games are “flexed” and change times or even dates, depending on the importance of the game. That is usually ok with me, because, like everybody else, I don’t think much about the impact of a dumb game on others. Things mostly only matter to me in direct correlation to their proximity to me. In other words, I only care if it happens to me. I recognize that isn’t something exclusive to me, it’s a human disease, and if we are interested enough to change, we spend our whole lives taking baby steps to open our minds and hearts to notice and understand the lives of others.

I did think of those poor suckers who have sports tickets to a game to only get it flexed, or rescheduled, away. Today, I am that poor sucker. I am not the usual poor sucker, I know full well that tv contracts drive sports leagues far more than ticket sales. And I know the ticket sales of once/year fathers & sons really doesn’t move any needles at all. Yes, I know these things, and today, I don’t care. I think it’s awful. And I think it’s awful I have to tell my boy the biggest part of the trip we’ve been planning for months has disappeared. I wonder if it’s worth it to fly to Dallas to rent a car and stay at some hotel to eat a few meals out? I wonder if the trees or sun look different there.

Of course, like everybody else, we’d like to see the stadium where the Cowboys play… Is it worth a year of debt? If they let us work out in the team weightroom with the team, maybe. But now that I think about it, I like the Cowboys because of the star on the helmet far more than the name on the back of the jersey (at least since Troy Aikman retired). If I don’t ever do curls with Dak Prescott, it’s not a loss I’ll regret.

When I say it’s awful, I do it in full awareness that in the eternal scope of things, a family missing an NBA game is very low. But relativity simply doesn’t matter when it comes to heartbreak. When a teenage girl breaks up with a boy, the tears don’t come less because the Middle East is in a perpetual war. The diagnosis of a 90 year old woman in Tennessee certainly isn’t as big as the bombs in Ukraine that will kill many, many more over a line on a map (yes, it’s an oversimplification, but you get the point). But it’s not inconsequential to that woman in Tennessee or to her family. It’s seismic and earth-shattering. The boy who has lost his first girlfriend will find another, we all know that, but it doesn’t make it better, it never has and never will.

Our pain is just that, ours. And it doesn’t have much at all to do with relativity. Yours is yours and mine is mine, and one moment spent comparing the 2 is pointless and disrespectful. A broken finger is not a fractured rib, but it still hurts like crazy. We talk honesty here, right? How many times has it made sense when a friend told you what they were walking through but didn’t want to tell you because others have it worse? None. Not one. Not now, not ever.

Because we hurt doesn’t minimize their suffering. We can hold them all in our great big beautiful hearts. I’m angry and disappointed over this ticket catastrophe, but in no way do I confuse it as being a monumental global disaster. Or even as any bigger than it is. But I do think the God that created and loves me cares. A LOT. And is disappointed with us (not in us). I bet He saw that reschedule and all of the fathers & sons who will lose the experience and was disappointed. I bet He saw me when I read that email and longed to hold me with His human arms and ease the storm inside my chest. And that’s good enough for me.

So maybe I’ll see you in Dallas, on Tuesday, at some awesome bbq restaurant or working out with the offensive line. And maybe I won’t.

March

March 19, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I struggle in the month of March. This is the month of several anniversaries that are quite painful, the end of a long dark gray winter, loss, overwhelming responsibilities, and this one in particular carrying some very good friends who are suffering as they carry heavy burdens and I walk alongside, trying to ease their weight with an extra pair of hands to hold.

I didn’t always know that March affected me the way it did (maybe it didn’t always), I just knew it was another part of regular emotional/psychological cycles, like any other. But that’s not really true. Once the Angel and I noticed, it became obvious. So, for the last many years, I/we have made provision for this disruption, and that was smart. All year, March looms large, and in winter, plans are made to address it, well before the first symptoms emerge.

But there is an interesting question here. What if March is no longer a problem? The responsibilities, relationships, and pain of friends could just as easily occur in September or June, maybe March has no impact anymore. How would I know? Is March causing the mindset or is the mindset concerning March the problem?

Parents & politicians used to argue about a genre of music called gangsta rap. NWA was brilliant & the most often targeted, and everybody wondered if the songs were simply reflecting cultural observations of a specific reality, or the songs, that were perhaps born out of a concerning reality, had outgrown and were now shaping the reality.

Are our lives creating our words or are our words creating our lives?

In the Bible, God spoke and created everything that is, and maybe you don’t believe that, but even so, it does contain an important truth: words have undeniable power. If you say you can’t do a pull-up, you almost certainly can’t. Luke Skywalker is attempting to lift the X-wing out of the swamp on Dagobah with his mind, can’t, and says, “I don’t believe it.” To which Jedi master and supercool sage Yoda replies, “that is why you fail,” and then does it himself. How much do we write the future when we say, “that’s just who I am/who he is/how she is?” I am convinced more than we would ever realize.

This is not ‘name it-claim it,’ ‘speak it into existence’ popular, flawed philosophy. Like most clever names, it’s not that simple. But also like most clever ideas, there is truth at the root. I might not be able to dunk a basketball, no matter how much I believe it, or if I say I can – but I for sure can’t if I’m convinced I can’t. The high school basketball team, historically, were beaten before the bus parked because they knew they were about to lose. They didn’t even have to play the game to find out.

When I tell you I’m a mess in March, I don’t even give myself a chance to find out if it still is. Maybe I WAS, maybe it WAS, but we absolutely need to give ourselves, ideas and realities the opportunity to grow and transform. Just because we were doesn’t mean we still are, right? I used to be lots of things I am not today. And I used to not be a million thing I am now. These boxes we build need to be dismantled with extreme prejudice, not with screwdrivers and care, but with wrecking balls and dynamite. Leave nothing left with which to rebuild. Start fresh, write a new story, imagine, dream, become.

Now, as it turns out, March actually is a bitch. But now I know.

Anxious People

March 15, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I just finished Anxious People, a novel written by Fredrik Backman. It’s the 2nd time, and I’m fairly certain I’ll read it every 6 months for the rest of my life. I finished the last 50 or so pages in my bedroom with the door closed, my son is home from work today, and I can’t stop crying.

(It’s nothing he hasn’t seen, he’s pretty comfortable with this kind of scene, but I don’t want to stop until the tears have finished on their own and I’m good and ready to stand.) It’s sometimes difficult to explain these tears. I’m not sad, I’m in love, and they are quite different tears.

If I were to be a book, I would want to be this one. It’s about a bank robber, hostages, death, beautiful boundless life, music, books, fathers & mothers & sons & daughters, spouses, marriage, divorce, mistakes, suicide, forgiveness, deep hopelessness and the perseverance of deeper hope, God, and love – for ourselves, each other, and this wonderfully complicated mess of today, every day, and this world.

This week was full. My mushy heart was broken several times, and grew 2 sizes every time. I was very very hurt and very angry, argued, fought, slept, wrote lots of pages of things I’d probably never say, sang too loudly, danced, ate less food than I wanted, threw baseballs, ran, lifted weights, screamed, laughed, held hands, kissed, my spirit fell so far I thought we might never get up, then we did. And here we are, alive and so thankful.

There’s no big, ‘important’ purpose to this post. I really just wanted to say hello, and that I hope you’re ok. Actually, now that I think about it, what could be more important than that?

Silly Site Prompt

February 27, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site prompt today is, “If you could be someone else for a day, who would it be, and why?” W

hy would I ever want to be anyone else???? Why would I want a different life? And If I did want a different life, why wouldn’t I set a new course and change mine?

Maybe our lives would become different if we’d simply lean in to the beauty that is already there that we’ve been missing, wishing we could be someone else. Nope, I wouldn’t want to be anyone else. I’m very grateful and happy where and who I am right now.

A Design For Life

February 26, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

This morning, I was listening to a playlist (the modern ‘mixtape’), and the song “Internet Killed The Video Star,” by the Limousines came on. It’s a perfect title and a terrific song, and it has this peach of a lyric:

“Well, I’m a horrible dancer; I ain’t gonna lie, but I’ll be damned if that means that I ain’t gonna try. Yeah, I’m a shitty romancer, baby; I ain’t gonna lie, but I’ll be damned if that means that I ain’t gonna try. Get up, get up, get up, and dance.”

So, I texted this song and lyric to my brother and sister, and she shared with me the message from her yoga class (written by yoga master Becky Hemsley):

“I know there may have been times in your life when you’ve stopped dancing, stopped singing, stopped being yourself, because someone was watching you. Judging you….We’ve been taught that we must only be ourselves if it suits other people…The birds sing – not because we might listen – but simply with the joy of being alive….So sing as loud as you wish, and dance as much as you like. You do not exist for the enjoyment of others. You exist to be alive. Properly, fully, beautifully alive.“

Sometimes the world sends you messages so obvious, so clear, so coincidental that coincidence is impossible. It’s a specific message from the Creator of the Universe to us – in this case, a message to dance and/or romance, or share the message to dance and/or romance, or witness to the importance and imperative that we all dance and/or romance. I’m choosing to do all 3 today.

We have been conditioned into self-consciousness, even when that means we miss out on all sorts of beauty and wonder. When did that happen? When did we stop dancing (even if we’re bad at it)? Who told us we’re bad at it? For that matter, who are they to decide? When did we stop romancing (even if we don’t know how to do it yet)? When did we stop singing, stop living, and when did we replace it with just quietly getting by?

Well, I don’t think we should do that anymore. I think we should dance whenever and however we want. It’s super fun to be so free.

And as far as romancing, the characteristic that makes each of us so sexy is confidence, passion, interest, joy. We are good dancers when we dance when we love to turn the music up and move. We are great romancers when we lean in and give our authentic selves to each other, with vulnerability, honesty, trust, and open-ness. We are great lovers when we love. And the more we practice, the better we are.

You don’t have to apologize for dancing or singing. If anything, you can apologize for not dancing and singing earlier. Have a good time. This life is a gift, and it can be very hard and hurt a lot, so we are well served to enjoy it when we can, to move our hips when whenever we feel like it.

The next song in the playlist was “Murder On The Dance Floor,” where Sophie Ellis-Bextor sings, “you better not kill this groove,” which is more solid advice as we design our lives. The point is to not kill any more grooves, to not squash anyone else’s dancing, and to sing and romance as loud as we can.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: Spirituality