IHOP ‘Max Tomato’, ‘Hyperbolic Time-Chambers’, and my Dani…

Blogging at its truest: I "process-wrote" at Starbucks for over three hours. I'm accepting this. I have a novel pitch for readers to respond to but first I need to do some reflection -- something 'normal' preceding a BIG lump of weird. Inspiration is a powerful reason to live. I want to be inspired and…

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A River to Wash the Pain

I feel like I need to get this off of my chest: I lacked courage all along. Just now I asked myself "why don't I feel like writing even though I know I want to be an author?" yet another instance in scores of times. This time I answered myself honestly: "because I don't want…

The Meaning of Life & Suicide in a Bathtub

Though it contains true facts, this is a piece of magical realism. Read it in its entirety before becoming alarmed... I considered the option of suicide in a bathtub, four years ago. I dreamed of luxurious, hot, morbid release as I read the warning label on a bottle of drain-cleaner in my Grand Rapids, MI…

Wrestling the Anchor: A Prologue

"I define religion at its best as a positive and effective means of relating to the mysteries that define our lives: love, death, birth, illness, marriage, and work, to name a few . . . . A twenty-first century religion sanctifies them with sacraments, rituals, sacred stories, and sometimes guardian spirits. The arts serve this…

What am I doing, again?

“What am I doing here?”: A question often framed in the most existential terms, as asking about the origin and purpose of one’s life. In my case, I posed it to myself when I laid down to sleep on a cane bench in rural Mindanao, Philippines. Why is the Mission Intern in Palestine eating fish…