Brian Allain

From “Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner” by Frederick Buechner As Acedia, boredom is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It deserves the honor. You can be bored by virtually anything if you put your mind to it, or choose not to. You can yawn your way through Don Giovanni or a

From “The Discipline of Inspiration: The Mysterious Encounter with God at the Heart of Creativity” by Carey Wallace Conventional wisdom on creation holds that artists tend to fall along a spectrum between the craftsman, whose trade is pure technique, and the shaman, guided by pure inspiration. Creation, according to this line of thinking, is also

From “The Soulwork of Justice: Four Movements for Contemplative Action” by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson It’s freedom that the deepest part of yourself yearns for. Not a freedom that centers on narcissistic notions of self, inflating your ego. Rather, it’s liberation from the obsessive, self-absorbed reactivity borne from being bound to the responses of others as the

From “Walk with Me: A Journey through the Landscape of Trauma” by Ellen Corcella People perceive chaplains as having a difficult, if not impossible, job. Friends in my church community sometimes remark, “I don’t know how you do it.” It is well known that chaplains show up when death lurks in the corner. But we

From “Dropout to Doctorate: Breaking the Chains of Educational Injustice” By Terrence Lester, PhD In 2014, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s  article “The Case for Reparations” went viral. Published in The Atlantic, it detailed the egregious injustices faced by Black people, including mistreatment, land theft, and strategic exclusion from homeownership. He writes, “From the 1930s through the 1960s,

From “How AI Changes Your Customers: The Marketing Guide to Humanity’s Next Chapter” by Mark Schaefer This is a moment that caught me off guard. While I was preparing for a trip to France, I asked ChatGPT to help me brush up on my French. It quizzed me on common terms to help me order

From “World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading” by Jeff Crosby In the entry on the BIble in his “theological ABC” titled Wishful Thinking, Frederick Buechner offered some helpful, practical guidance that was important to me as I was becoming a more serious reader of Scripture. He suggested that at least when we are new

From “Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons” by Frederick Buechner Like “duty,” “law,” and “religion,” the word “vocation” has a dull ring to it, but in terms of what it means, it is really not dull at all. Vocare, “to call,” of course, and our vocation is our calling. It is the work

From “The Language of the Soul: Meeting God in the Longings of Our Hearts” by Jeff Crosby  The music of your life is subtle and elusive and like no other – not a song with words but a song without words, a singing, clattering music to gladden the heart or turn the heart to stone,

From “The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything” by Stephen M. R. Covey The One Thing That Changes Everything There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world – one thing which, if removed, will destroy the most powerful government,