Admittedly, there are many things I don't understand. Today I received an email from the good folks at Meetup.com that informed me there are still people who play Dungeons and Dragons. Back when the game first came out, people so struggled to distinguish the game from reality that they would kill themselves believing they could…
I was watching a presentation by Joan Chittister recently as part of the Spiritual Directors International annual conference. In it, Sister Joan put forth the Benedictine steps to humility as a solution to what she - correctly, I believe - sees as the loss of values in our overly individualistic society. One of the qualities…
You cannot be a compulsive liar or gaslighter and be a "good person." Why not? Most of what goes into being a "good person" is integrity. Can I trust what you say? Do you say what you mean? Is what you say consistent with what you know to be true? What would the upside have…
What do we do when our values and our beliefs are in conflict with the decisions our government makes? If we are honest with ourselves and aware of what is going on around us, we will start to notice how often this happens with greater frequency. When we see those situations, we will begin to…
The old black and white Superman television program's opening informed us that Superman stood for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." I'm not quite sure who is to blame, but Superman seems to have dropped the ball because now we have "Alternative Truths, Lack of Justice, and the Autocratic Corporate Way." The above photo is…
This is not a political post, though it does involve people in politics. Think of it this way - if I wrote about the personal choices of a football player, that post wouldn't be about football. I wouldn't be saying that I like the team the person plays for more than another team. The same…
Remember values? They were those old fashioned things that gave us a somewhat consistent outline of what we would and wouldn't do. Most people would say, for example, that killing other human beings is wrong. Other values included the idea that it was a good thing to be honest, to avoid cheating, to act with…
In case you haven't noticed, institutional religion is on a ventilator and not expected to survive. The reason is very simple, though many experts would make it very complicated because you can't write a book with only a few sentences. It doesn't matter what religion we are talking about, all religion began with a charismatic…
He did. In the Bible. Wheaties were a big part of his spiritual program. It's right there in the Bible. He was also big on isometric exercise. He said so in John's gospel. The most frightening part of those statements is that some people will believe them. I am quite honestly surprised no advertising agency…
Have you noticed? Life is cheap. Usually when we talk about life being cheap we are talking about life in the hood, where nobody really expects to live past twenty-five anyway so why not just kill whoever crosses our path? It's much safer to talk about life in the hood being cheap because when we…
Craig Bergland 