Let’s file this under “things I never thought I’d have to write about.” Several months ago I noticed a lump on my left triceps. I brought it up to my doctor and after looking at it and feeling it, he said it was a lipoma, a benign fatty tumor, and nothing to be concerned about. He said he’d seen this in other patients and when he sent them for referrals to the surgery office the surgeons just tried talking the patients our of having an elective procedure. A few months passed and this lump wasn’t going away, in fact it had grown. I saw my doctor again and again he said it was a lipoma, but he would agree to give me a surgical referral if I really wanted one. Due to a busy schedule I let a couple months pass and then finally asked for that referral at the end of March. After several tests, including a biopsy, I got the diagnosis last week that I had pleomorphic liposarcoma, a rare and usually aggressive form of soft tissue cancer. Talk about a lightning bolt out of the blue. I w
On multiple occasions over the past year I’ve had a reoccurring dream. I find myself in an insane asylum where the inmates have taken over and have the appearance of zombies. I was going from room to room looking for other trapped people, some asleep and others unaware of what was happening, and leading them to escape. At the same time, I encounter a few of the insane zombies and I am able to cure them so they become “normal” and leave with us. I believe this is a prophetic dream speaking to the nature of our culture and our mission as Christians. In the early telling of the story of Narcissus in Greek mythology the young man become enamored with his own image and committed suicide after despairing that no one could love him as much as he loved himself. It’s from this story that modern psychology takes the name Narcissistic Personality Disorder to describe an individual with an inflated sense of their own purpose and a lack of empathy for others. The Mayo Clinic lists the followin
I don’t know about you, but sometimes it feels like the past year has been one long Lent. The coronavirus pandemic began shutting down society just a couple weeks after Ash Wednesday last year. Since then, we have experienced prolonged times of imposed fasting and abstinence. It has felt like a long spiritual desert where our religious practices and community gatherings have been disrupted. Like Jesus in the wilderness, as a church and a nation we have experienced a season of temptations which we haven’t always resisted. Our faith in institutions, religious and secular, have been put to the test. I listened to an interview on the radio about the impact that quarantines and shut-downs may have in the future as people’s habits—like dining out, traveling, or going to movies—have changed and they may not go back to some of those things as restrictions are lifted. The same can be said for churches. Many who may have been attending Mass out of habit or obligation have had the better part o
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