...unless you are willing to admit our flaws. Americans are a horribly inconsistent bunch. We expect things we have no reason to expect, for which there is no evidence of even te possibility of manifestation, but not only do we expect them we also become enraged when we don't get them. Some of that is…
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…
Funny how Original Sin, a dismal doctrine that suddenly appeared from the quill of Augustine in the fourth century as he tried to explain away his own compulsive sexual behavior, really is a lot more about original blame. Even today, humans seem obsessed with guilt and blame. From mass shootings to weather events to viruses,…
what the mind cannot accept. That's a paraphrase of retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong. When I first heard the idea a few decades ago, I wasn't sure that I agreed with it. Now I know that I do agree with it wholeheartedly. Whenever I hear someone offer a nonsensical reason for a well understood…
Women have breasts. Bartam Trail High School in Florida apparently is either surprised by that fact or believes that students haven't discovered it yet. They feel compelled to keep breasts under wraps, and so have edited eighty yearbook photos to remove all traces of cleavage. I would hasten that no boy's picture was edited for…
Americans tend to view getting ahead as acquiring more stuff. Houses, cars, furniture, appliances, vacation homes, boats, motorcycles, and more define where we believe we stand measured against other people. As Roxy and I were taking our walk today we met two little boys and their mother. The boys asked if they could pet Roxy,…
Attachment to outcomes is never a good idea, yet in our culture we receive messages from all sides telling us we are absolutely, personally responsible for the success of every movement that we support. The messages quite often are formatted in an "if, then" way. "If our effort doesn't succeed, then disaster looms and so…
Rugged American Individualism is a long ago expired truth which today is nothing more than a fiction. Allow me to demonstrate with a few questions... When you woke up this morning, what woke you up? Was it an alarm clock? Did you make the clock, and did you make solar panels which you installed yourself…
Seriously? What would make us think such a thing was even possible? Who would choose a name like that, a name that implies that truth no longer exists? Of course it means that in our world today many people believe that opinion matters more than truth. I reject that notion! I reject the idea that…
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…
Craig Bergland 