Invite Me to Speak - The Simple Art of Raising Children in your Spare Time

It's not hard to find experts who will teach us how to manage our children. But that both exhausts and bores me; I don't want a system. I don't want to maximize my kids' potential - whatever that might mean.

Kids are not adventure equipment, or status symbols, or raw material to channel through the factory of my ego-whims.

I am not here to tell you how to get your kid to eat her lunch, go to bed on time, or to devise a homework schedule. I used many child rearing techniques in my 20 years of parenting, but almost every "system" eventually fell away.

What I want to understand is how we should LIVE. How can we live our lives so that our choices, struggles, joys and battles can help to foster the lives of our children and ourselves?

Do we know what we want when we “raise our kids”? Do we know what our goals and hopes are? Are we as clear as possible on what our mission is?

I can speak to the theoretical and then to the nitty-gritty of raising good kids who, we hope and pray, can take care of themselves and this world as they grow up.

"Something Happened Here"

What's your opinion on the High Holy Religious Holidays?

I don't necessarily believe the beliefs that the Christian Churches say one ought to believe. I did for decades and then in short order and long practice, many of those dogmas faded away. I don't think that means I am right and doctines are wrong. I mostly believe one learns more about faith by trying to live a generous and kind life (anyone who thinks being kind is for sissies hasn't done enough of it yet) than argue shades of theological pronouncements that have come to us, too often, via powerful white men.

What It's Like (for me anyways) to Preach

This is what it’s like to preach if you hardly ever do it.

This coming Sunday (2/25/18) I am preaching in my own church, United Universalist Unitarian at 506 N. Washington in Waukesha, at 10:30. You are very welcome to attend.

My sermon is “645 Years Later / Julian of Norwich and the Spiritual Art of Perseverance.”

I have been working on this sermon a little and then a lot for the past several weeks. It is a peculiar adventure to invent a sermon topic, write the sermon, and then preach it. Women and men who do this every week have my utmost respect - and disbelief.

Where I am Preaching 12/31/2017

I am preaching this Sunday, Dec 31st in Beaver Dam, WI at this church.

http://www.trinitychurch-unitedmethodist.org/

The service will start at 9:30 in case any of you live close and couldn’t think of what else to do Sunday morning (hah).

My sermon is “Something Happened Here”

“One innocent day last spring my husband asked me if I would like to take a little getaway to Chester, Illinois, In August. Because we all know how appealing southern Illinois is, in August.

“What’s in Chester, Il?”

Sermon – Something Happened Here

One innocent day last spring my husband asked me if I would like to take a little getaway to Chester, Illinois, In August. Because we all know how appealing southern Illinois is, in August.

“What’s in Chester, Il?”

“It’s in the Path of Totality. There is going to be an eclipse in August and there will be a 60-mile path that goes from Oregon to South Carolina, and Chester is inside that path. If we go there we can see a total eclipse.”

Sermon – Roses on the Columbia

The word courage comes from the Latin Cor – which means heart. Core – the center of things. Cor - to go towards the essence of what needs to happen, to be at the middle of an event. Courage is to act from our ‘cor” - our center, our heart.

…

While on the space shuttle Columbia, which would explode during reentry a few days later, astronaut Laurel Clark wrote some emails to family and friends. This is from one of them: Subject: Hello from 150 NM above the Earth

Invite Me to Speak - It's not SIMPLE life, it's Simpler Life

I can speak to the luxuries and adventures that happen when one pursues a simpler life.

What are things to consider and enjoy?

Knowing oneself well enough to know what you want from your mortal life.

Where to live.

What to drive (or not drive).

What projects to tackle and which ones to let lie low.

What to wear.

How to splurge with joy and not worry.

When to go out and when to stay home.

Friends, company, cats and pups.

How do you design and live your own authentic, generous, rewarding life?

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