May these words rise until the dream becomes reality...

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Mourning

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I was fine. For about three years I had been preparing myself for that day; I knew it was coming soon. I always asked myself what I'd do when it happened. Would I be upset? If I was, would I show it? Would the world stop spinning? What about everyone else; how would they react? It seemed like that day would never come, but then it did. And as soon as it did it started to feel like a distant memory--fading at first around the edges, creeping its way towards the center of my memory like a dissolving acid. We hadn't been home long. Our move back across the Mississippi River was a long haul, but we were here, back where there were hills, pork barbecue, and boiled peanuts. We hadn't even unpacked the boxes in our temporary rent house. I was getting used to the routine (or lack thereof) of being the "new guy" when my phone rang. I knew who it was and what they were going to say: "She's getting worse. It won't be much longer now. Can you do the funeral?...
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Life, liberty, and property

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Why are we in love with stuff? Stuff breaks. Stuff gets old. Stuff wears out. Stuff is expensive. So why do we love it? I say we because I love stuff too. Of course, I'd like to think my stuff is a bit more socially acceptable, but at the end of the day it's really just more stuff. Stuff is a symbol of our spending power--our worth. Stuff gives us control, grants us status. Stuff clutters our hallways and offices, yet we don't want to get rid of it, because we know we'll just go out and get more. There are people who have serious issues with stuff; we call them hoarders. However, the strange thing is no one has ever come to my home, seen some stuff I don't use, and say, "Hey man, why you got all this stuff over here that you don't use? Are you a hoarder?" I don't know. Maybe we're all not that obsessed with stuff, but it does say something that we live in a country with an entire industry built around storing excess stuff. I'd like to ...
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The Problem with Hell (Again)

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This is a re-post I thought might be appropriate in light of recent events in the "evangelical" and "emergent/emerging" world (and I just don't have the time at the moment for a new post). Hell. The word "hell" is mentioned only 13 times in the Bible (that is the New Revised Standard Version of the Old and New Testaments, excluding the Deuterocanonical books, for those of you keeping tabs). Eleven of those times it is in fact Jesus who speaks the word, which is the Greek word Gehenna (if you'd like to learn more about Gehenna and the history behind the word, you can click here). To give you a sense of perspective, while the word "hell" is translated some 13 times in the entire Bible, the word translated "poor" is used some 25 times just in the four gospels of the New Testament (of course in both cases this excludes allusions to the ideas of hell, poverty, etc.). Hell has been the topic of some of my more "theological" ...
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