spirituality

  • Nothing Else Should Matter

    Nothing Else Should Matter— Steven A. LaChance How did we learn to live like this,in a world that leans so easily toward hate? Where did it begin,this quiet beliefthat we are somehow betterthan the person standing beside us,to the right,to the left,close enough to touchbut kept at a distanceby nothing more than an idea. What…

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  • Easter Monday

    Easter Monday

    The 1949 St. Louis exorcism is one of the most documented and debated cases of possession in American history. It is the case that inspired The Exorcist, but most of what people think they know comes from film, not from the actual accounts. When you go back to Father Bishop’s diary and read what was…

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  • Inside Grace

    Inside Grace

    I’ve spent some time over this past week writing about the crucifixion and the resurrection. Not because I felt the need to explain them, and not because I think I have answers that anyone else doesn’t. I wrote because I had something to say, and because it is still rare to see a gay man…

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  • He is Risen

    He is Risen

    He is risen. That is the line that survives. Clean. Direct. Easy to hold onto. But it is not where the story ends. It is where things become harder to understand. Just days before, the people of Jerusalem thought they knew who Jesus was. They welcomed him with an understanding of a version of him…

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  • Good Friday

    Good Friday

    I have been thinking about Good Friday. Not just as a day on a calendar, but as a moment that changed the course of the world and history in a way that is hard to fully take in. It is often told quickly, moved through on the way to something else. But when you slow…

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  • A Night of Betrayal

    A Night of Betrayal

    Lately, I have been spending time in some of the most ancient biblical texts we have, not just reading them, but really contemplating them. Looking at what was kept, what was emphasized, and what seems to have been left behind along the way. There is a quiet pattern that starts to emerge when you do…

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  • Crazy

    Crazy

    Crazy will always be one of my favorite books I’ve written. First of all, how it was written is different than anything else I have ever done. In 2006, I was personally asked to come to an old truck stop restaurant on Old Route 66. The Tri County Truck Stop in Villa Ridge, Missouri. They…

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  • Twenty Years Later

    Twenty Years Later

    “He turns; I can see his frontal torso in the light. It’s covered in blood. Is he looking at me? The room begins to spin. The sound of his desperation matches the tempo of his hands scrubbing his body. The room keeps spinning and spinning. I still feel his eyes on me. I can’t breathe.…

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  • A Haunting Disease

    A Haunting Disease

    I heard a quote once that described a haunted house as one that had gone insane. That made a strange kind of sense to me. The idea that a house could harbor something hidden inside it, a kind of internal system that carries something through its walls and floors like a disease. That is what…

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  • Thought Form

    Thought Form

    What is a thought form? A lot of people hear the word “thought form” and immediately think it means you imagined something. That’s not what it means at all. A thought form is what can happen when emotion builds up within a person over time with nowhere to go. Grief. Stress. Fear. Anger. Things that…

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