faith

  • Cold

    Cold

    Saturday. Thirty degrees.The cold makes staying in beda theological act.Winter remembers itself here, briefly, in the mountainslike a ghost that forgotto leave completely. The heater hums a midnight hymn.I lower the dial to fifty,a small rebellion against the dark.Still, I waketo its murmur—faithful,fighting a chill I cannot name. They promise warmth next week.Santa Anas will

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  • I Believe; Help My Unbelief

    I Believe; Help My Unbelief

    November 9, 2025 Father, I believe; help me with my unbelief. Most honest thing anyone ever said to God. This father with a sick kid, desperate, saying yes and no in the same breath. That’s it. That’s the whole deal. The story’s simple enough. God comes down, walks around, dies, comes back. Believe it and

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  • Cardboard Gospel

    Cardboard Gospel

    Jesus loves you, the sign read. A crooked heart leaned against the words—hand-drawn, imperfect, but certain. A King’s promise sketched onto cardboard, lifted above the choking traffic of the 101. The valley swallowed me whole. I was just another cell in the city’s concrete artery, staring toward the San Gabriels where the light still knew

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  • The Box Ain’t the Problem

    “It’s been seven hours and fifteen days,” (Sinéad O’Connor, Nothing Compares 2U)or 2191 days if you’re the kind who needs the math, since you walked in like you owned the placeand bent me into a kind of happy I didn’t trust but wanted anyway.It only needed water, we thought.Turns out it needed a whole lot

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  • “Between Markets and Metaphors”

    It’s Wednesday. The world’s on hold—Wall Street holds its breath like a priest before confession,waiting on the Fed to whisper its gospel of rates.The headlines scroll with conflict:dust devils of sand and sorrow between Iran and Israel,while a man in a white hat chants a forgotten hymnabout greatness, past tense. And me?I’m at Rosebuds, beneath

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  • Good Friday, Again

    Good Friday, Again

    I woke with a hymnhalf-formed on my tongue—Stricken, smitten, and afflicted—the kind of song that burrowsinto the folds of a child’s memory,etched deeper by dim lights and heavy ritualsin a Lutheran church that never smiled on Good Friday. We sang it every year,never once on any other day.And though it sounded like mourning,we were expected

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  • Surrender

    Surrender

    If you were to choose a tattoo for yourself, what would it be, and where would you place it? For me, I’ve already found meaning in the two tattoos gracing my fingers. One is a King of Hearts, with a crucifix at its center—a symbol of Christ’s sovereignty and sacrifice. The other simply reads “surrender.”

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  • Running with His Pleasure: Chariots of Fire

    What movie or TV series have I watched more than five times? There are likely a few contenders, but one stands above the rest: Chariots of Fire. This film entered my life in the 1980s, a golden era when I was in the prime of my youth—running track and cross country, chasing fleeting romances, and

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  • happy birthday

    happy birthday

    Daily Prompt: A Letter to My Hundred-Year-Old Self Dearest Me, Happy Birthday! Today, you turn 100—a century of breaths, heartbeats, and steps guided by a hand greater than our own. As I sit here, almost 50 years behind you on March 10, 2025, I can only marvel at the life we’ve lived. Half a century

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  • Listening, hear me out.

    Listening, hear me out.

    I hear you. And I mean, really hear you. In the grand blueprint of life, the most ambitious DIY project any of us will ever undertake isn’t just built with wood, nails, or stone, but with choices, relationships, and the wisdom we gather along the way. Your words ring true—no project worth its weight is

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