It is so easy to grow up in our world and never really understand how different ours is from other peoples experiences. How could we ever know unless we got the chance to experience those other worlds. Eventually, however, most of us end up getting glimpses of other people's understanding of God, religion or even culture. As my friend group expanded and I had the chance to learn that other people's churches and faith teachings seemed so different from the way I was taught in my home church on Davis Street in Ottumwa Iowa. With in this story I reveal two things, 1. As a Member of the little known faith movement called "The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)", I was taught that God was more about love than fear and judgement and 2. Why I hate, I mean really hate, hot chocolate!

This was my first attempt to tell a story about my mother's life and her effect on mine. It is told in more of documentary style but it is worth a listen. It is one of my older stories first released in the book, "Imperfect Stories: Memories from Holt Street."

Before I really knew what my life would become, just as I was finishing up my junior year in college, I traveled to the remote western rainforest of Brazil. I spent 5 weeks with a community of people and in a place, "a living room" as different from the one I was first taught about what was important in life as possible. Now when I look back on it and experience the world of today, I wish - no I hope that people could learn to see the common elements between each other. I guess what I really desire is that people would connect their experience/living rooms with the people they see as most different from themselves. My favorite word and the name of this podcast plays underneath this story ; Propinquity: The necessity of close proximity for relationships and trust to begin.

In a small neighborhood in Ottumwa Iowa, my younger self learned the transformative power that happens when people (his child neighborhood friends) focus on a lot in between. A metaphor based on a real experience that started with the irrational act of mowing an abandon lot, knowing that it would not, could not last beyond that one summer. This became a core experience as to how the world is often transformed through acts of collaborative propinquity in the midst of a world that constantly promotes division and selfish individualism.

I wrote this story about the life and eventual death of my sister, during one of the most difficult and imbalanced moments of my life. I sat in a church parking lot, having arrived an hour too early for the meeting, and in the midst of my own confusion for the direction of my life, this story possessed my heart and soul. In one hour, I wrote it all down and cried until I laugh as my sister seemed to sit with me again and bring my back into life balance. Perhaps this is just the story you need to hear at this moment? If so, my you find tears of laughter.

This story is about the rules we learn early in our life through our games on playgrounds that eventually become the divisions in the wider society we live in as adults. Here is an excerpt:

Elementary playgrounds are not as innocent as they are often imagined to be. It was there among the multi-colored slides and merry-go-rounds that I learned how to accept, judge, compare, stereotype, forgive and even fear other human beings. It was at recess, twice a day, that I experienced human behavior at its absolute best. It was also there, running back and forth on the blacktop, that I discovered the worst of what we can be when we allow our differences to drive us apart.

Things we learn in elementary school are often the most lasting because they occur long before we perceive we are making choices about who we are or who we are going to be. Our understandings of the rules of the wider society seep deep into our consciousness in the midst of play and therefore, sidestep our normal internal alarms and suspicions. These ways of, and rules for, treating other people don’t seem so important or serious because they are just part of playing a game.

Sometimes the people we meet early on in our life stay with us as we experience the rest of our life. We were never a large group of church friends and perhaps the fact that our numbers rarely exceeded a dozen, made those days together even more memorable and worthy of a story. With all groups of people who grow up together, some drifted away and others joined us later in our adventures. However, most of those who, in church language, shared in cookie communion together in that nursery, were still there when it came time to be released into the wider world following our graduation from high school.

I learned early that moving from one world to the next, from one phase of life to the next part of the life journey was difficult but well worth the effort. I believe I hid this story of how my days in seminary began for two possible reasons. One, I was a little ashamed of being so poor and being from a culture that was more worried that I might learn strange things in seminary, rather than seeing anything odd about driving a little mattress flying car across the country. I did not want people to see me as Jethro from the Beverly Hillbillies show. However, two, I think part of my reason for not mentioning all the events that nearly prevented me from making my way to the next phase of my life, was because in the wonderful culture I grew up in, this was simply just another day of finding my way in the world.