Rev Dr Sparky on Real/igion

Tag: Life Lessons

  • No jury, no justice

    A true cautionary tale This is a true story about an experience I had months ago, and I still don’t know what to make of it. One morning, in a modest county courthouse, a roomful of adults allowed their personal feelings to prevent them from helping a child find justice. Here’s what happened. Photo by…

  • The future of cussing

    A PG rant about R-rated language Like all of us in this writerly space, I love words — words flowing through books or blogs, words bounced around a dinner table, words launched from a stage like tractor beams to reel the audience into a new world. And I admit that throughout my adult life, I’ve particularly enjoyed using…

  • The secret storm in my brain

    …that even I didn’t notice. This is not your usual how-I-surmounted-mental-illness story, though I admit I enjoy a good how-I-surmounted-mental-illness story from time to time. Rather, it’s a story about how everything I thought I know about my mental condition might have been wrong. See, I thought my brain had some idiosyncrasies of mood and some…

  • Time to clean out your word closet

    Photo by Gary Chan on Unsplash At the turn of each calendar year, I love to purge files, sort housewares, clean out closets and send my usable discards to the thrift store (while hoping I don’t buy them back later). As I do so, I’m also thinking it’s a good time to inventory some words and…

  • How to get more out of your health care

    Help your doctor be a better doctor We all know that the health care industry in the U.S. is sick as a pup, but no one can agree on the reasons, and no one agrees on the cures. At the national level, it’s a complex crisis. At the personal level, health care providers’ compassion is being…

  • Stop looking. Start seeing.

    Along with other inquirers, I’ve written in these pages about the “do it yourself” nature of many of our spiritual or religious journeys. I’ve reflected on the language we use to shape our beliefs and wondered cynically whether those beliefs might actually be merely aspects of our own personalities. But now I want to look…

  • Thinking with the mind of the world

    It surprises me that I’m about to talk about some visions that I have experienced in my life as a self-styled seeker. I’m talking about actual visions that occurred while stone cold sober— scenes I could see perfectly that I knew no one else would be able to see. I never said much about them…