Shows
True North with Dave BrisbinPresent PrayerDave Brisbin 8.30.20
I was asked this week by someone who said he always asks this question of someone he’s meeting for first time: what is the most important thing you’ve learned in life? My answer was immediate. Presence. He was surprised and said that no one has ever answered that way before. I asked how most people answered, and he said either love or virtue. My spiritual journey has been many things over the years from truth to salvation to serenity and peace to love and joy, but at this point it’s all about presence. Without presence first...
2020-08-3044 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinPresent ChoicesDave Brisbin 8.23.20
There are two basic ways we make choices. The first is with judgment—applying all we have experienced and learned to a particular situation or circumstance. We’ve been taught all our lives that it is wisdom to exercise good judgment. Then Jesus tells us not to judge. Are we supposed to throw out all the programming, the learned and experienced data of a lifetime that has helped us survive? Of course not. But when it comes to personal relationships and spirituality, a preprogrammed response necessarily brings the biases and stereotypes that kill relationships by allowing us to make...
2020-08-2343 min
True North with Dave BrisbinAll About PresenceDave Brisbin 8.16.20
Watching a spider hanging for days motionless in its web up in a remote corner of our ceiling gets me thinking about the purpose of a life lived only to keep on living. Obviously spiders have purpose in the ecosystem, but many people have been telling me during this pandemic lockdown that they feel caught in a Groundhog Day time loop, where every day is like every other, purpose and meaning falling away, depression taking their place. While it’s true that may of the activities that used to give us a sense of purpose whether related to wo...
2020-08-1646 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinHinge MomentDave Brisbin 8.9.20
When I first began working in recovery, I heard an AA oldtimer emphatically say that he was grateful to be an alcoholic, and I couldn’t process that statement. How could alcoholism be a good thing? But now a couple decades later, I see how for him, the pain and trauma of his alcoholism created a hinge moment, a point in his life, because of his choice for recovery, that angled the trajectory of his life in a new direction, like an alternate timeline in those time travel movies. Hinge moments are usually only seen in retrospect, years la...
2020-08-0949 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinOn Non - ViolenceDave Brisbin 8.2.20
A public debate we’ve been having for past few months and past sixty or seventy years is whether violence is necessary to effect needed political change in our society and law. Or can non-violent methods work just as well? Better? Both sides have persuasive arguments, so the debate continues. Martin Luther King brought non-violent resistance to the civil rights movement in the nineteen fifties, but he stood on the shoulders of Mohandas Gandhi and his application of non-violent non-cooperation in his fight for India’s independence from Britain in the nineteen thirties. And Gandhi stood on the shou...
2020-08-0253 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinUnfinished BusinessDave Brisbin 7.26.0
Ever wonder why the world is the way it is? Why isn’t it some other way? Why is life so difficult? Why do we have to eat other living things to stay alive? Why is there so much evil in the world? Death and destruction? Hate, bias, racism, greed? Would you have created the world this way? And if you wouldn’t and God did, what does that say about God? If you haven’t asked these questions, then you haven’t been very plugged in. Humans have been asking as long as there have been humans. And huma...
2020-07-2642 min
True North with Dave BrisbinLeading The WayDave Brisbin 7.19.20
I was asked to talk about leadership last week, and I took a deep breath before responding because I realized what a loaded topic it was and how the request itself was coming from a profound disappointment in our current political leadership. I think I said I’d think about it, but the more I did, the more it seemed like it needed to be discussed. What makes a great leader? When I really considered it, analyzed the leaders I admire most, laid their qualities against the leadership exemplified by Jesus, I shouldn’t have been surprised that the...
2020-07-1948 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinUncarved WoodDave Brisbin 7.12.20
A friend makes the comment that being a Christian is really hard. I ask why. He says it’s hard to meet moral and ethical standards, understand theological and doctrinal concepts, and live the precepts of the church. Well, he doesn’t put it that way, but more or less what he means. He also says it’s hard to put up with the bias he sees in our media and culture and encounters in his own life. Is it hard to be a Christian, or more on point, to be a follower of Jesus? We’ve made our fait...
2020-07-1249 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinEach OtherDave Brisbin 7.5.20
My wife tells me we need to talk about hope on Sunday. It’s been so heavy lately, so much to process, so much disturbance, where do we look for hope? That’s the key isn’t it? To continue to find hope, to continue to trust that all will be well in any circumstance. I hear radio hosts glibly throwing around words like endurance, resilience, caring, mindfulness, but it feels true and insulting at the same time. Platitudes. Where can we find a way to hope that still acknowledges the reality of whatever pain we feel? I’ve been...
2020-07-0549 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinBreaking ThroughDave Brisbin 6.28.20
The current unrest over race relations has opened and even forced the opportunity for honest discussion about race and persistent inequality in our country. Unfortunately amid the demonstrations and destruction, the extreme voices are the ones heard the loudest, and emotions and rhetoric are high. Is it possible in this climate to actually talk to one another, to learn things we don’t know about each other’s culture and experience that is different from our own? And can we, will we use this present crisis as a head start down the path of self exploration to identify our...
2020-06-2848 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinEnd Of TimesDave Brisbin 6.14.20
I’m often asked about end times and the apocalyptic passages and books of the bible that support popular end times scenarios. But especially now, there is an increase of questioning as the events of the last few months appear to mirror much end times imagery. A recent survey showed 56% of a group of pastors believing that we are in end times, but what can scripture itself show us about what we can and can’t know about end times? And what is prophetic and apocalyptic literature anyway? And since it’s so easy to get lost in the we...
2020-06-1446 min
True North with Dave BrisbinAn Appointed TimeDave Brisbin 6.7.20
We’re sailing through a perfect storm of pandemic and protest driven issues that are raising deep questions and the need for reexamination of ourselves and our society. Can our scriptures help us at a time like this? I’m asked how we’re supposed to understand Romans 13 where Paul tells us to obey our state authorities no matter what—they are ordained by God. He tells us to pay our taxes and bills and respect our leaders—no matter what. In other letters, he tells us if we’re married, stay married, if we’re single, stay single, if we’...
2020-06-0736 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinFifty DaysDave Brisbin 5.31.20
Pentecost Sunday: Though it’s the feast of Pentecost today, the week of protests and riots are the elephant in the room that demands some attention and discussion. But is there a link between our response to the strife and opposition around us and the deepest message of Pentecost? Or better, would our engagement in Pentecost temper our response to the opposition we face? Between the extremes of the most destructive forces around us, there are still voices in our country calling us back to connection and sanity. Those voices crying in the wilderness are the ones giving us...
2020-05-3144 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinHigh PlacesDave Brisbin 5.24.20
Thomas Merton wrote that the bible is, without question, one of the most unsatisfying books ever written until the reader comes to terms with it in a very special way. If you’ve never been unsatisfied by the bible, if you’ve never been perplexed, affronted, offended, even outraged by it, then it’s possible you’ve never seriously considered it. What are we to make of God ordering Abraham to sacrifice his son, or Moses being punished with death before entering the promised land, for one infraction in forty years? Or Jesus saying it was for his follower...
2020-05-2447 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinFear ItselfDave Brisbin 5.17.20
As the outbreak crisis continues, fear is ramping up in us either directly or through its son and daughter emotions of anxiety, stress, anger, and depression, among others. It’s becoming painfully clear that our fear is now creating new problems and exacerbating others, which brought a quote to mind from another era: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Franklin Roosevelt said that in his first inaugural address in 1933—another era, but as history always shows, one much like our own. It was the fear of the people that had begun driving the Depression deep...
2020-05-1745 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinWhen Dad Acts Like MomDave Brisbin 5.10.20
Mothers’ Day. This pandemic and lockdown has pulled the veneer of so many of our fears in just the past two months, it raises the question: why so many of us who know God loves them are still experiencing so much fear? Did we miss a memo somewhere? A woman once told me she knew God loved her, but wondered how she could know if God liked her. May sound silly at first, that if God loves us, doesn’t that include liking? Or does liking even matter in the face of love? But I think that question lies...
2020-05-1048 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinDoorwaysDave Brisbin 5.3.20
The best part of being a pastor is being trusted enough to be invited into people’s lives. To see and be a part of their vulnerabilities and fears as well as joys and celebrations. And during this lockdown, many people I’m talking to have multiple losses and difficult circumstances layered over the quarantine crisis. And each one, whether a death, illness, unemployment, homelessness, a hospitalization, represents a loss of the relationships and routines, the way of life that we call our world and our lives. That experience of being thrust into a doorway between the world we k...
2020-05-0350 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinFrom Fear To ForgivenessDave Brisbin 4.26.20
Everything in the New Testament is geared toward creating in us a fundamental shift in perspective. To experience the process of learning to see life through the Father’s eyes. To see life in all its complexity, diversity, contradiction, even absurdity of pain and joy from the viewpoint of the one thing it all comes from, is sustained by, and ultimately is. When we can begin to see life from this point of connection, everything changes, and we can finally begin to see the ground-shaking significance of Jesus’ prayer from the cross asking our Father to forgive those who...
2020-04-2645 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinRelevant And UsefulDave Brisbin 4.19.20
As I talk to more and more people being worn down by quarantine lockdown to where some are in real distress, the point is hammered home that our faith, spirituality, and the message we convey must be relevant and useful enough to meet people at their point of need. If the gospel as we understand it isn’t relevant, if it remains abstract—however beautiful as a concept—what good is it? Some recent surveys are showing that domestic violence calls are up 35% in the past few weeks. Chinks are appearing in everyone’s armor, but where there was dysf...
2020-04-1950 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinAmong The LivingDave Brisbin 4.12.20
Easter Sunday: On Easter, in the midst of a pandemic lockdown, we celebrate Easter virtually via streaming with our community watching a live stream from their homes, setting their own communion tables to fully participate remotely together. Though missing each other’s company, in the following days, it was wonderful to hear how individuals and families created their own sacred space and found connection in spite of isolation. This Easter we try to step inside the minds and emotions of Jesus’ closest friends and followers as they live through the traumatic and mind bending events of Good Friday thro...
2020-04-1232 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinTriumph and TragedyDave Brisbin 4.5.20
Palm Sunday: On the first day of Holy Week—the week before Easter Sunday that recounts the events of the last week of Jesus’ life and circumstances of his death—the church celebrates Palm Sunday, named for the palm branches waved and laid before Jesus as he entered Jerusalem for the last time. The church has dubbed it the triumphal entry, but Jesus himself considered it a tragedy. Why? In Luke’s gospel, he weeps over the city and predicts its destruction because the people still didn’t know the things that make for peace, that they missed the hour o...
2020-04-0451 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinMaking MeaningDave Brisbin 3.29.20
Fascinating thing about human nature is that we will do almost anything to avoid uncertainty and find meaning in the events and circumstances around us. And the bigger the event or circumstance, the bigger the cause needs to be to give the event the meaning we crave. But events, circumstances, and object don’t have meaning in themselves—they’re inanimate objects. If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it mean anything at all? It’s we who must bring meaning to the events and circumstances we experience. When we st...
2020-03-2959 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinLiving the ConnectionDave Brisbin 3.22.20
On the first Sunday of COVI-19 lockdown, streaming to those in self-isolation, the surreal quality of living the reality of a pandemic outbreak is amplified. In just a week of lockdown, many of us are already strongly feeling the effects of disconnection from each other and the regular routines of life that once connected us. How can we best help each other in times like these—or any times? As always, Jesus gives us the principles: establish authentic connection first, see others and their needs as they really are, respond with action that because it is grounded in co...
2020-03-221h 05True North with Dave BrisbinUncertain TimesDave Brisbin 3.15.20
There’s an elephant in the room, and there’s no sense not addressing it. The COVID-19 outbreak is unprecedented in the way it is changing our way of life, and there’s a sense that things may never be the same, just as they never were after 9/11. With schools, churches, conventions, restaurants, sporting events, all public venues shutting down, with supermarket shelves empty and people fighting over bathroom tissue, we all want to know how long this will last and how bad will it get? The truth is, no one knows—and that is what is most frighten...
2020-03-1546 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinDivine DissatisfactionDave Brisbin 3.8.20
If we are to be persuaded to try to make this Lent a transforming process, the creation of a new habitual way of living in greater presence, it’s important for us to have realistic expectation of the result. Most of us would say that we expect peace in some form, and by that we mean we want any and all hurting to stop, an absence of the pain and longing that characterize so many of our lives. But Jesus never promised this. He said that he gives us his peace in one passage, then says that he di...
2020-03-0837 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinA Sacrament a DayDave Brisbin 3.1.20
I often say that I’m a teacher, not preacher, by which I mean that a preacher’s main purpose is to persuade, and a teacher’s is to encourage students to engage. Both impart information, but the agenda is different. That said, there are things I do want to persuade my listeners: to be intimately part of a faith community and to passionately engage their own spiritual journeys. How this is done is entirely up to them, but this Lent I have been trying to persuade everyone to use this time to try to establish a new habitu...
2020-03-0144 min
True North with Dave BrisbinConfidence in ConnectionDave Brisbin 2.9.20
It’s natural for people to focus on law and rules because the world runs on law and rules with the threat of punishment enforcing obedience. It makes the world go round and trains run on time. And the church, as an institution, has largely run on the same premise, which then makes God guilty by association of also looking for obedience to his “law” as the means by which we are accepted and approved. But Jesus and the Hebrew prophets before him are showing us a God running on compassion and mercy instead of justice, and if we’re...
2020-02-0938 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinPart of the FamilyDave Brisbin 2.2.20
Continuing a series of exploring difficult subjects, those that tend to really set off emotional triggers and divisive arguments, we have dug into the concepts of salvation, eternal life, Satan and spiritual warfare…and now the question comes about whether God’s judgment on us is predestined or if we really do have free will. Wow, no easy questions here. Just as with salvation by works or grace, there is an immediate apparent contradiction in scripture. Paul seems to directly say that God, from the beginning of time, has already picked the winners and losers—those going to heaven...
2020-02-0240 minTrue North with Dave BrisbinA Delicate BalanceDave Brisbin 1.26.20
Decades ago, I thought it was important to challenge a Franciscan priest who said he believed that Satan was really a metaphor for our own inclination to evil. He waved me off saying that all he could do was tell me what he was convinced of; that I needed to go become convinced of what I’m convinced of. Now, decades later I am challenged for my beliefs on Satan and evil, and though there is no definitive proof from the scriptures I used then to “prove” my points, I do have a different responsibility than did the priest...
2020-01-2642 min
True North with Dave BrisbinEternal AlivenessDave Brisbin 1.19.20
One of the drawbacks of the Sunday morning sermon is also its strength: uninterrupted speech. Good for developing and delivering a message, but not for conversation. And conversation, the give and take, question and answer is where ideas can really be conveyed and absorbed. And with a topic as large as salvation that was tackled last week, this Sunday is more about the conversation. Recapping the main lines of thought on salvation from last week’s “Becoming Saved” message, it seemed good to add a bit more thread. It’s hard for Westerners to get their minds around the Hebr...
2020-01-1943 min
True North with Dave BrisbinBecoming SavedDave Brisbin 1.12.20
A friend takes me to task saying that he could see that what I write and teach would make someone want to be “saved,” but that he couldn’t see where I was actually telling anyone how to attain salvation. Based on our understanding of salvation in Western Christian tradition and Paul’s line from Romans 10: if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your hear that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved, I completely understand why he would say that. But what if the Jews who wrote our scriptures, includin...
2020-01-1240 min
True North with Dave BrisbinResolutionDave Brisbin 1.5.20
Why are new year’s resolutions so hard to achieve? They are so hard that fewer and fewer of us actually try to make them anymore—especially those over fifty-five year of age. I suppose the older we get, the more we realize the difficulty, which lies in the fact that what we want most, resolve to do most, is not the result of a mere intellectual decision, a stated intention that we make once at the head of a new year. The things most valuable to us are always the result of repeated, ongoing action, discipline, and dedi...
2020-01-0545 min
True North with Dave BrisbinBlessed AssuranceDave Brisbin 12.29.19
Anticipating a new year and new decade, how best to prepare and direct ourselves? How best to find the hope, peace, and assurance we need to remain undeterred and undistracted amid the noise and chaos of another year? Coming from an unexpected direction, I get a phone call from a licensed clinical psychologist, a PhD who had a near death experience that was so profound that he had to write about it, asking if I would be willing to read his manuscript. His story stood out among other such experiences I’ve read in its sincere attempt at ob...
2019-12-2949 min
True North with Dave BrisbinStar of BethlehemDave Brisbin 12.15.19
Has the Star of Bethlehem ever fascinated you? The Star that led the Magi to Jesus…what was it really? A miraculous star that appeared and behaved like no other star ever did or could? Or a natural, but perfectly or supernaturally timed astronomical event like a comet, supernova, conjunction of planets or some other anomaly as many scholars have suggested? But even such events, if natural, could never behave as Matthew describes the Star behaving: going before the Magi, unseen by Herod and his advisors, and then stopping and standing over the place of Jesus’ birth. Is ther...
2019-12-1549 min
True North with Dave BrisbinAnawim of ChristmasDave Brisbin 12.08.19
There’s a word little known in Western Christianity that was a foundation of Hebrew spirituality, appearing throughout both Old and New Testaments. Anawim, plural for anawv in Hebrew, literally means to “bow down” but by extension means lowly, poor, oppressed, or marginalized. But more than that, it refers to people who have accepted this position in life, see themselves as vulnerable and dependent, and are grateful for all provision—realizing that ultimately they must rely on God rather than themselves for sustenance. The humility, submission, and grateful vulnerability of the anawim were understood as the ideal attitude toward l...
2019-12-0849 min
True North with Dave BrisbinThe Gifts of the MagiDave Brisbin 12.01.19
Why is there so much depression and anxiety at Christmas? One psychologist writes that there are three reasons: the demands of time, preparation, activities, and finances; family dysfunctional issues that are highlighted during the season; and inability to meet expectations placed on us both physically and emotionally. When you think about it, we first experience Christmas as children—learn what our culture says it’s supposed to be through a child’s eyes. And it’s a perfect storm for children: from three feet off the ground, the lights, decorations, candy, treats, magical beliefs, gifts, suspense, and anticipation create a...
2019-12-0144 min
True North with Dave BrisbinThanksgivingDave Brisbin 11.24.19
In the run up to Thanksgiving, we take a pause to ask if anyone knows who established Thanksgiving as a national holiday in the first place. Our thoughts tend to go back to Pilgrims and Native Americans collaborating, but it was surprising to most that it was Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, who instituted Thanksgiving. This is ironic on two fronts: that Thanksgiving was born in the middle of the darkest period in American history, and born of Lincoln, a man of near constant depression at the most stressful time in his life. What...
2019-11-2442 min
True North with Dave BrisbinWhat We Are Really DoingDave Brisbin 11.17.19
Launching a new book is a crazy process. An all-consuming process. A process that takes on a life of its own and sweeps author and marketing team up into a whirlwind of deadlines, strategy, tasks, and emotion. But what does it all really mean? A book hopefully has meaning poured into its pages, but once it becomes a product to be sold, is there any real meaning left— to it and the process of selling it? As with all the tasks, causes, careers, and activities of life, where is the meaning? Maria Montessori said that play is the wo...
2019-11-1735 min
True North with Dave BrisbinAccepting the ChallengeDave Brisbin 11.3.19
If we really accept Jesus’ original challenge to “sell” everything we think we know and cling to for support and survival, what happens? What changes? The short answer is that we descend into a time of voluntary disorientation and disturbance sometimes bordering on panic as we realize our whole worldview wasn’t actually reality but just a set of beliefs, a filter on the world that we chose for ourselves or was chosen for us. And once we’ve looked behind the curtain, everything changes. But to be more specific, if we’re looking at the church and our faith, w...
2019-11-0348 min
True North with Dave BrisbinCreatures of a Broken HeartDave Brisbin 10.27.19
In speaking about the pain and disturbance of breaking out into larger spheres of awareness—being born again intellectually and spiritually—an ancient Chinese philosopher says, “you can’t speak of ocean to a wellfrog, the creature of a narrow sphere; you can’t speak of ice to a summer insect, the creature of a season.” To that I would add, “you can’t speak of perfect love to a human being, the creature of a broken heart.” Our broken hearts, as surely as the frog’s well or insect’s lifespan, wall us off from something so far from our imagined...
2019-10-2744 min
True North with Dave BrisbinPeople of the BookDave Brisbin 10.20.19
Continuing on the previous week’s theme of Playing the Scriptures—finding the inspiration of scripture in the real time connection between inspired author, God, and inspired reader—what is our real relationship with scripture? The Quran, Islam’s sacred book, calls Jews and Christians “people of the book,” noting our special relationship and reverence for the text. But this focus on the text of scripture itself, the need to intellectually understand it as God’s revelation to humanity, has only brought two thousand years of division and persecution, resulting in tens of thousands of Christian denominations worldwide today. Is ther...
2019-10-2049 min
True North with Dave BrisbinPlaying the ScripturesDave Brisbin 10.13.19
It is so interesting that bible scholars and commentators for two thousand years have agreed on very little that they read of God’s word and have violently disagreed often as not. And yet the mystics and contemplatives among us seem to unanimously agree on everything they know of God. Maybe it’s not so strange when you consider that scholars are reading words and mystics are experiencing presence, but do written words and unwritten experience necessarily lead to different results? Only when we get so immersed in the words that we lose sight of the experience they were...
2019-10-1340 min
True North with Dave BrisbinConvictions of the HeartDave Brisbin 10.6.19
Some twenty-five plus years ago, I walk into the office of a Franciscan priest, bible in hand, to debate a specific doctrinal issue, and before I can get more than a sentence out, he puts his big hand up in the universal stop sign and says: All I can tell you is what I’m convinced of. You go become convinced of what you’re convinced of. At the time, it seemed a supreme evasion, but as years went on, I realized it’s the only thing one person can say to another about the deep things that really...
2019-10-0645 min
True North with Dave BrisbinLines in the SandDave Brisbin 9.29.19
If you ask anyone what they really want out of life, you’ll get a variety of answers from health, wealth, relationship, family, love to meaningful work, purpose, a cause, making a difference to peace and serenity. But why do we want all those things? Because ultimately we believe they will make us happy. But happiness may not be the right word because it implies emotions that are ephemeral. Contentment. Solid, reliable, evergreen contentment. Ultimately, if we have that, we have it all. But we know the stories: people who have most or all items on those lists, st...
2019-09-2946 min
True North with Dave BrisbinStars Beneath Our FeetDave Brisbin 9.22.19
Years ago, I drove all the way to Death Valley deep in the Mojave desert, arriving late at night so I could walk out into a dune field under a really dark sky to see the stars. I wasn’t disappointed. The vast canopy turned overhead with the band of the galaxy angling across, and from my dunetop perch, I felt close to the stars. But was I any closer there than here in the city where I can count the stars on a couple of hands, or during the day when no stars pierce the blue curtain at...
2019-09-2244 min
True North with Dave BrisbinYou Had Me at HelloDave Brisbin 9.15.19
Our main mission at theeffect is to reintroduce Jesus to Western people. To meet Jesus again for the first time is to meet an ancient, Eastern Jesus who can speak again for himself, stripped of two thousand years of Western commentary and interpretation. And looking at Jesus through the eyes of those who followed first, hearing him from his own context and worldview, what is the essence, the foundation of his life and message? That’s what we really want to know, but to simply know is only an open doorway. Jesus’ real message is about what happens when...
2019-09-1548 min
True North with Dave BrisbinFreefallDave Brisbin 9.8.19
One of my most indelible memories is freefalling from twelve thousand five hundred feet. All these years later, my skydive remains both a clear memory and a clear metaphor. To do an accelerated freefall— jump without a jumpmaster strapped to your back, meant eight hours of training on the ground. And all day long I felt the fear growing until it was at the base of my throat as I stood holding the edge of the open door of a plane looking down at over two miles of air. As long as I was holding the door, I ha...
2019-09-0841 min
True North with Dave BrisbinSticking PointsDave Brisbin 9.1.19
For past few weeks, we have been working through paradoxes, seeming contradictions—sticking points to being able to really trust our spiritual journeys. And nothing seems to stick us more than the difficulties, traumas, and sorrows of life. How are we supposed to understand them and their meaning in our lives? We’ve been programmed by church and culture to see them as evils in life, signs of God’s disapproval, chastisement, or correction—to be avoided or prayed away. But Jesus has a very different take that is illustrated well by Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet—that joy and so...
2019-09-0137 min
True North with Dave BrisbinA New HopeDave Brisbin 8.25.19
My wife suggests I speak about hope, and I’d been given some hope this week, but in a way that is a bit harder to express than I’d like. Had a dream of a conversation with an old friend who took his own life just over three years ago. It was a full role reversal, where I—who’d been pastor and counselor in our time together—was now student as he was counseling me. And I can’t remember anything he actually said, but it was the way he said it that was arresting: with a presence...
2019-08-2536 min
True North with Dave BrisbinPhantom LimbDave Brisbin 8.18.19
It’s no secret that religious vocations and church attendance and membership continue to decline in the US and West in general. But even so, as religious affiliation and participation declines, more and more people, especially young people are describing themselves as spiritual and finding ways to express that spirituality. And the direction of the shift is nearly always in the same direction—toward a contemplative, even mystical spirituality. Considering three stories: a Carmelite order of nuns formally shifting back to ancient rites and rituals, a young Southern Baptist man who converted and became ordained into the priesthood of t...
2019-08-1846 min
True North with Dave BrisbinSubmission and IdentityDave Brisbin 8.11.19
There is a persistent emphasis on submission and identity in Jesus’ teaching pointing to an obvious relationship between the two. Jesus is telling us that there is something that we can learn about identity from submission that we can’t learn from dominance—the constant focus and striving for dominance and power over others and our circumstances. And since Jesus always couches his teachings in the relational realities of daily life, especially the relationships within families, we can look at another basic reality of life for more clarity: eating and drinking…food. Food and the need to eat stands a...
2019-08-1138 min
True North with Dave BrisbinFamily TiesDave Brisbin 8.4.19
In trying to get his message across, Jesus doesn’t speak of abstract theological concepts but always couches his teachings in the relational realities of daily life. Starting with the basic relationships in each first century home—husband and wife, parents and children, master and servant—his implication is that if we can’t experience Kingdom there in those relationships, we won’t experience it anywhere else either. His emphasis on questioning the sense of identity these family roles give us, especially present in first century Jewish life, is the first step toward finding a deeper identity in unseen Fat...
2019-08-0435 min
True North with Dave BrisbinThe S WordDave Brisbin 7.28.19
I love our Jude-Christian scriptures. I’ve been studying them for the past twenty-five years or so and trying to live by their precepts. But I didn’t always love them. In fact they have baffled me, confused, angered, annoyed, and outraged me for decades until I learned to read them in a way that seemed closest to the way in which they were written. That required reading through an ancient, Hebrew context. When we do that, sense, common sense, and a hold on common decency returns to a text that otherwise appears too alien to be of much...
2019-07-2835 min
True North with Dave BrisbinGift of MeaningDave Brisbin 7.21.19
A four day trip to the mountains with parents-in-law becomes contemplation by circumstance as everything slows and quiets down, adjusting to the pace and rhythm of our elders and the mountains. With everything we do and identify left down the mountain, without the noise, distraction, and activity that keeps us from considering the quieter, more interior parts of ourselves, what is left? Who are we then? What is the meaning of our lives here? The mountains remind that it has something to do with giving—the giving of ourselves to a moment and all who share that space. Bu...
2019-07-2043 min
True North with Dave BrisbinSeventeen YearsDave Brisbin 7.14.19
On the seventeenth anniversary of his ordination, Pastor Dave talks about the journey and what he’s learned about the meaning of following a spiritual path that only a certain amount of following can convey.
2019-07-1412 min
True North with Dave BrisbinPractical IdealsDave Brisbin 7.7.19
In The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, marriage is first described as a life-long, even eternal union where two live life as one. But then the prophet goes on to say there should also be spaces in the togetherness, that the winds and seas should dance and move between, just as the pillars of the temple stand apart and the strings of a lute remain alone though they quiver with the same music. It can be an initial shock to read these thoughts through the lens of our ideal notions of romantic love, but only because the ideal is...
2019-07-0729 min
True North with Dave BrisbinAnother GoodbyeDave Brisbin 6.23.19
On the occasion of saying goodbye to our worship leader and friend of nearly five years as she moves out of state, I realize how much I seem to have been saying goodbye over the past two years. People have moved and died and simply fallen out of touch, and each loss takes its toll on my willingness to start again, imprint again, hurt again. It seems to never get easier, and yet what is love asking of us? In the prose poetry of the The Prophet, Khalil Gibran’s spiritual masterpiece, love is spoken of as a di...
2019-06-2321 min
True North with Dave BrisbinWater from the SkyDave Brisbin 6.16.19
Father’s Day: It’s impossible to overestimate the influence our fathers have had on our view of life and ultimately of God. Fathers tend to be less present to small children than mothers, more the disciplinarian who expects acceptable performance for approval. Even given all the variations in families and fluid parenting roles today, we still learn primarily from our fathers the way the world works in terms of the judging of performance and consequences of non-approval. And in a patriarchal culture, our institutions and especially our churches reinforce the traditional role of the father, and as we t...
2019-06-1938 min
True North with Dave BrisbinBeing the BelovedDave Brisbin 6.9.19
We’ve been looking at love from God’s point of view: what is this love, what does it look like, how can we begin to grasp its infinite scope? But maybe what’s more important is beginning with the assumption of its reality and then asking what it means for us to be the beloved? To look at God’s love from our point of view. What does a person beloved of God look like? Fortunately, we have an example that jumps off the pages of scripture because his name actually means beloved—dead giveaway that we should be...
2019-06-0944 min
True North with Dave BrisbinLove of ThreeDave Brisbin 6.2.19
I sometimes get asked why I don’t talk more about the Spirit, and that question always surprises or at least reminds me of differing perspectives. Of course I understand why it comes up—the Spirit is central to any reading of the New Testament as that which draws us to God, informs and empowers us to a fullness in spiritual awareness. This week, I was asked when I would talk about the Trinity, so I thought I’d put the two together in the context of love and see what happened. It took the church 300 years after the cr...
2019-06-0238 min
True North with Dave BrisbinHere Be DragonsDave Brisbin 5.26.19
Medieval maps of the known world would often depict dragons in the water beyond where anyone had gone. Uncharted waters held both promise and unknown dangers, and some maps actually printed the words here be dragons to really hit the nail on the head. Those willing to sail beyond what was familiar were the ones who charted the maps in the first place and continued to push against the dragons until the entire globe was charted. You see, everything it means to be an explorer begins where the map ends. It’s the same with the spiritual life. Th...
2019-05-2641 min
True North with Dave BrisbinKingdom of GraceDave Brisbin 5.19.19
If you were asked to name Jesus’ main purpose in his ministry, could you do it? There will be many answers of course, but we don’t have to speculate. Jesus told us flat out in Luke 4 that his purpose was to preach the Kingdom of God to all the cities. So if the Kingdom of God is Jesus’ purpose, have we gotten the message? Do we know what the Kingdom is? Just as it was misunderstood by Jesus’ first followers, we misunderstand too, which is why Jesus goes to such lengths to tell us that the Kingdom is not a...
2019-05-1936 min
True North with Dave BrisbinMom and DadDave Brisbin 5.12.19
Mother’s Day: Two scenes from a movie try to capture what the day to day relationship was between Jesus and his mother. They are touching scenes, one heartbreaking, but both underscore the power of a mother’s love that is the closest we will come to the love of our Father in this life. If mother’s love is closest to the Father’s love and the Father’s love is arguably the most important thing we can learn in our spiritual formation, then why do we refer to God as Father? Where’s mother? Looking at how the Hebr...
2019-05-1241 min
True North with Dave BrisbinEach OtherDave Brisbin 5.5.19
A friend calls me to the hospital bed of her dying husband, and there in the room with her and him and his entire family, watching and being part of the dynamic and grief, I am hyper aware of the precious nature of all our relationships. And a line from a Carl Sagan returns: that in all our searching, the only thing that makes the emptiness bearable is each other. When I first heard that, I didn’t agree on theological grounds, but twenty years later, I’ve become convinced. It has occurred to me that if God real...
2019-05-0539 min
True North with Dave BrisbinMeeting JesusDave Brisbin 4.28.19
On Palm Sunday, looking at how the various groups of people around Jesus couldn’t see him as he was, but only through the filter of their own agendas and desires and so didn’t recognize the hour of their visitation—and then on Easter, looking at how the closest friends of Jesus didn’t recognize him at all after his resurrection—there’s a whole lot of unrecognition going around. So who is this Jesus we’re trying to follow and emulate? What do we really know and how close is what we think we know to who he really...
2019-04-2846 min
True North with Dave BrisbinAmong the LivingDave Brisbin 4.21.19
Easter Sunday: One of the most striking details of the post-resurrection narratives in the Gospels is that none of Jesus’ closest followers recognize him when they first see him risen from the tomb. What is going on here? How could they not recognize Jesus? Is this a literal fact being preserved, a deeper spiritual meaning being evoked, both? The two figures confronting the women at the tomb give us the best clue: why do you look for the living among the dead? Answer: they buried Jesus and expected him to stay put. Reasonable assumption, but they were looking fo...
2019-04-2118 min
True North with Dave BrisbinThe Way to the WayDave Brisbin 4.14.19
Sixth Sunday of Lent, Palm Sunday: Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem that Jesus ironically sees as a tragedy for his people. Why? Because they miss the hour of their visitation, keeping them on a path leading to destruction. But how so? They greet him at the city gates with palm branches and shouts that signify the return of a king… As we look at the four main groups interacting with Jesus—the people and Zealots, the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Romans, and Jesus’ own followers—we see that each group only sees Jesus thro...
2019-04-1438 min
True North with Dave BrisbinMaundy ThursdayDave Brisbin 4.7.19
Fifth Sunday of Lent: And so we come to Maundy Thursday as we work through the liturgical days of Holy Week. The traditional scripture passages associated with Maundy Thursday are all the events and preparations for the Last Supper, the agony in the Garden, and Jesus’ arrest. It’s a busy day as Jesus gives a new commandment to his friends at supper—to love each other as he has loved them, institutes the Eucharist/communion, washes his friends’ feet, and prays a long prayer before going to the garden of Gethsemane. But as we look at the deeper s...
2019-04-0732 min
True North with Dave BrisbinTuesday and WednesdayDave Brisbin 3.31.19
Fourth Sunday of Lent: Each liturgical day of Holy Week from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday has a name and scripture passages designated that tell the story of the final week of Jesus’ earthly life. But each day and its passages also tell another story when we look beneath the literal meaning. They show us the internal experience of the Way of Jesus…the path he takes all the way to the cross. Focusing on Holy Tuesday and Spy Wednesday that tell of the wise and foolish bridesmaids and about Judas and Mary, we find stor...
2019-03-3136 min
True North with Dave BrisbinThe Task WithinDave Brisbin 3.24.19
Third Sunday of Lent: Flipping channels, ran across the movie Chariots of Fire. Hadn’t seen it in decades and got immediately pulled in. Story of two runners preparing for the 1924 Olympics—a British Jew and Scottish Christian who couldn’t be more different. As the Brit is using running as a weapon against the prejudice he’s endured as a Jew, the Scotsman simply “feels God’s pleasure” when he runs. And his whole life as both athlete and Christian missionary to China reflects his ability to do two things: to see through the surface task—whether running or teach...
2019-03-2241 min
True North with Dave BrisbinDesert BloomDave Brisbin 3.17.19
Second Sunday of Lent: Trying to sit quietly in balcony chair and warm sunlight but shadows keep flitting across my closed eyes. Every time I look, nothing there, until finally I catch a smallish butterfly streaking by. Then another. And another, until I realize there’s a dense column all driving overhead in the same direction. Later I learn of the one billion butterflies migrating north to Oregon and beyond…because the rains this winter in the interior deserts dropped annual rainfall levels in single weekends, and dormant seeds and bulbs under the desert floor bloomed into carpets of f...
2019-03-1738 min
True North with Dave BrisbinLiving LentDave Brisbin 3.10.19
On the first Sunday of Lent, we stop to consider what Lent has meant since the middle of the second century to millions of Christians from ancient to medieval to modern times. What is its place in the liturgical calendar and how did it and the other seasons of the church along with their cultural practices bind the people together in common experience? A common experience we no longer possess in our culture. But understanding Lent by understanding the model from which it came, Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, we begin to see that regardless of what the ch...
2019-03-1041 min
True North with Dave BrisbinCanaDave Brisbin 3.3.19
The shape of our life journey moves initially from the simplicity of childhood to the complexity of adulthood. But if it stops there, we’ve missed the point of it all. To push further, to let go of the complexity and dive back down into the simplicity of our essential spirituality brings us into real meaning and purpose. To illustrate from John’s Gospel, the story of Jesus’ first miracle, changing water to wine at Cana, can be read very simply as just that, Jesus’ first miracle that established him as more than a man, teacher, and sage—someone in...
2019-03-0346 min
True North with Dave BrisbinReleaseDave Brisbin | 2.24.19
Talking about the mental gymnastics involved in moving from dualistic thinking to unitive thinking, once again, it’s not about become wholly one or the other, but a realization of the need for the balance of middle ground. Ultimately all our brains do—our left brains at least—is to differentiate: compare and contrast, find the edges of things to define and distinguish them from the background and the next thing, to place them in categories, divide light from dark, past from future, us from them. Without this ability, we don’t survive. All the tasks along our journey...
2019-02-2435 min
True North with Dave BrisbinStaying SimpleDave Brisbin | 2.10.19
When I was in pastoral training, a pastor told me that no one should preach the parables until they’ve been in ministry for 30 years. Now I violated that right away, but approaching 20 years in ministry, I do see what he was driving at. There is a perspective that comes just from sheer years of having seen the panorama, the parade of years go by that creates a different way of looking at life—and parables need to be looked at the way we look at life--not text. For two thousand years, scholars and clergy have debated the mean...
2019-02-1044 min
True North with Dave BrisbinSower and the SoilsDave Brisbin | 2.3.19
Situated on the liturgical calendar between Christmas and Easter, between Jesus’ birth and death, is a perfect time to look at Jesus’ life—to look at balancing what he lived and how he loved with the more theologically significant events of his birth, death, and resurrection. It’s a perfect time to consider how living as he lived would give theological significance to our own birth and death. But our western church roots go deep, and making that balancing shift can be difficult unless as Jesus says: we grow new ears to hear. Using parables to break through what we...
2019-02-0343 min
True North with Dave BrisbinA Comma and a DashDave Brisbin | 1.27.19
Nearing the end of the liturgical season of Christmas that spans 40 days from Christmas Day until the feast of the Presentation on February 2, we are now living between Christmas and Easter, between Jesus’ birth and death. People have commented on the fact that a tombstone lists dates of birth and death with only a mere dash signifying the entirety of a person’s life. But Jesus didn’t even get a dash; he only got a comma. In the earliest creed of the church, the Apostle’s creed, Jesus’ birth and death are listed in a series of beliefs on...
2019-01-2745 min
True North with Dave BrisbinHow Then Shall We PrayDave Brisbin | 1.13.19
The passing of Shirley Boone, Pat Boone’s wife of 65 years has had a big impact on many of us. A close personal friend and staunch supporter and member of our community for the past five years, she will be hugely missed here and of course worldwide. But watching Pat moving through the final months of her life and through the week following her death has been a great lesson for me. Pat prayed for healing ceaselessly, but prayed in such way that his faith and characteristically cheerful attitude toward life and God’s presence continues now unabated. He d...
2019-01-1346 min
True North with Dave BrisbinEpiphanyDave Brisbin | 1.6.19
January 6th has lost its significance in our non-liturgical, Western churches. Known as the feast of the Epiphany since ancient times, it celebrates the appearance of God to Magi and the rest of the world and sits in the transition between the 12 days of Christmastide and the 28 days of Epiphanytide—the 40 days of the full Christmas season. It is a season full of other feast days and colorful, even superstitious, activities and rituals of the ancient and medieval church. But though we see these now as curious and quaint, they held the people together in common cause and ex...
2019-01-1345 min
True North with Dave BrisbinForward and BackDave Brisbin | 12.30.18
The run up to Christmas was full of personal setbacks and a difficult week, but the Christmas service itself seemed to simply erase all that angst in one stroke as I allowed myself to immerse in the images, music, and sense of connection to the people in the room. We think of our spiritual journey as one solid path that we’re either on or off, and once on, should stay on if we only have enough faith. But life and scripture tell a different story: that the spiritual journey is not one path, but one moment—a mome...
2019-01-0642 min
True North with Dave BrisbinRecognizing JesusDave Brisbin | 12.16.18
We all tend to look for anything where we expect it to be. Makes perfect sense. Works for car keys and laundry detergent, but not so much when you’re looking for truth. Truth has a way of showing up in the most unexpected places, and if you’re only willing to look where you already believe it to be, you’ll miss it every time. How in the world would anyone think to look for or see in the face of a dirt-poor infant the truth of all that Jesus was? And yet the Magi did—advisors to their...
2018-12-1634 min
True North with Dave BrisbinBehold How They LoveDave Brisbin | 12.9.18
It’s hard enough to communicate spiritual experiences and truth when we’re honestly trying. But what about when we’re not? When consciously or unconsciously, we’re hiding behind spiritual platitudes and practices to justify our actions or inactions, to gain some advantage or outcome…? It can be tricky because it’s easy to convince ourselves that the language we speak and religion we practice and believe is “right” and spiritual in itself, but once again, Jesus is telling us something different. When at the last supper he told his friends he was giving them a new commandment—to l...
2018-12-0943 min
True North with Dave BrisbinWord LimitsDave Brisbin | 12.2.18
When we say to each other, just give it to the Lord, surrender your life to Jesus, or let go and let God... When we say, ask Jesus into your heart, pray about it, or you need to find God’s plan for your life…do we really know what we mean? And even if we do, does the person we’re speaking to have a chance at the same understanding? And even if they do, do they have any idea how to accomplish them? We can call them platitudes, but that makes them too easy to dismiss. They a...
2018-12-0243 min
True North with Dave BrisbinUndistorted ViewDave Brisbin | 11.25.18
When it comes right down to it, the main effects of an authentic spiritual journey are gratitude and humility. From these two attributes flow every other attribute we may associate with our spiritual progress. Why? If humility is defined as an undistorted view of ourselves and our relationships with God and each other; if gratitude is defined as an undistorted view of the moment we’re in, that it contains everything we need in the moment and is enough, then these two attributes are the reflection of the experience joy and contentment of pure presence. So, how do we...
2018-11-2539 min
True North with Dave BrisbinPraying the WayDave Brisbin | 11.18.18
Most of the questions we ask about religion and scripture and theology are really the same question over and over, because all of our questions and difficulties center on the one question of unconditional love and acceptance. In other words, we want to know if God is keeping a light on for us… But the answer we crave, the one that will really set our anxieties down, can’t be found in anything made of words. Even our scripture can only point to the truth, a truth that has to be lived to be believed at a level that...
2018-11-1143 min
True North with Dave BrisbinHabitusDave Brisbin | 11.4.18
When Jesus speaks of Kingdom, he’s not speaking of a place or a territory. He’s talking about us, all of us living a particular quality of being that translates into a particular quality of life—a habit of being. Some sociologists call any habitual way of being a habitus. But Jesus’ habit of being has a quality defined by presence, connection, the ability to see both the seen and unseen components of life—to see the overarching connection of everyone to everything and each other that is not apparent without this quality. It is a complete change of...
2018-11-0440 min
True North with Dave BrisbinWallsDave Brisbin | 10.28.18
A friend tells me he wants to take his motorhome up to Canada and stay for at least three months or more because he can’t stand being a part of the U.S. anymore. I figure it’s because of his politics, but as we talk, what comes out is a real grieving over the state of all relations in our country: race, political, religious, social, cultural, generational…he’s ashamed to be a part. Though we do talk about how many hours a day he spends watching cable news, he has a point. What’s happening in our cou...
2018-10-2843 min
True North with Dave BrisbinProof of LoveDave Brisbin | 10.21.18
In one of our studies last week, someone asks the age old question—maybe first question we humans have asked about ourselves and life: how can I believe or trust there’s a God or any higher power that cares about me and my well being when there is so much evil all around? The oldest book in the Bible is focused on this question. An entire branch of philosophy focuses on this question. Polytheism and atheism are answers to this question because if you have many gods, some good and some bad or no god, problem solved. But...
2018-10-2144 min
True North with Dave BrisbinA Study in PresenceDave Brisbin | 10.14.18
Last Thursday was a tale of two hospitals. First a trip to a prominent children’s hospital to speak to the director and manager of spiritual care about new programs they are initiating for patients, families, and clinical caregivers. I am struck by the unhurried presence of the two I meet. Unhurried, gracious, taking their time with me, as if I were the only person in their world until the moment they have to move on to their next meetings. From there, I drive forty miles to visit an elderly friend in critical care in a massive hospital do...
2018-10-1439 min
True North with Dave BrisbinRunning with SwimmiesDave Brisbin | 10.7.18
Sometimes insightful messages come in sets of threes, it seems. Or maybe it’s that as the first time goes right over our heads, second brings awareness, and the third really hits home, we’re just sensitive to the threeness of things. I suppose it’s always our choice to see life as either a series of coincidences or having divine influence or somewhere in between. And that’s the point: how we see the events in our lives and our place in them is a choice. Any worldview we choose will answer some questions and beg others, but whet...
2018-10-0737 min
True North with Dave BrisbinJust EnoughDave Brisbin | 9.16.18
Movies are our dominant storytelling media these days, and though we can say it’s a shame people aren’t reading as much anymore, sometimes the combination of a great script, great actors, and great pictures really brings a message home. Spinning the dial, I came across the movie Jackie and became involved in the story of Jackie Kennedy coping with the first seven days after the assassination of her husband/president. But what riveted me was the series of scenes between her and a priest counselor in which she asked the classic questions of grief, loss, and life...
2018-09-1640 min
True North with Dave BrisbinContemplative WayDave Brisbin | 9.9.18
Speaking more from a personal point of view, Pastor Dave talks about how the recent series on the contemplative journey and lives of mystics in the Christian tradition has stirred up emotional memories of his own journey and the questions they pose on the nature of the deep desire in some of us to engage this journey at all costs. Where does this desire come from? Why is it so strong in some of us and not others? How is it sustained? And most importantly, where do we direct it and nurture it into a conscious contact with...
2018-09-0937 min
True North with Dave BrisbinGraven ImagesDave Brisbin | 9.2.18
In the first and second of the Ten Commandments and many other places in the scriptures, God tells his people that he is their only God and that they are prohibited from making any carved images—what King James called graven images—of him or any of the gods of the near east pantheon because he is a jealous God who will visit iniquity on the people who defy him to the third and fourth generations. As we are looking at the contemplative practice of coming to know God intimately, how are we to deal with a passage like...
2018-09-0241 min
True North with Dave BrisbinSnapshotDave Brisbin | 8.26.18
Some twenty five plus years ago, as I was attempting to go into bible battle over a particular interpretation with a Franciscan priest. He held up his hand in the universal stop sign and said, “All I can tell you is what I’m convinced of. You go become convinced of what you’re convinced of.” Coming through my mindset then, it seemed like a complete copout. But later and after all these years, I realize it’s the only thing one human can say to another in matters of faith and spirit. In our fear, we want to be cert...
2018-08-2647 min
True North with Dave BrisbinAviaryDave Brisbin | 8.19.18
Watching the birds come and go in our backyard, I have my favorites. The finches and hummingbirds, the doves who do more walking than flying... Then I see this jet black bird with fire engine red wings and think wouldn’t it be great to wait for the perfect mix of birds, then throw a net over the whole thing—one big aviary with all my faves that I could see any/every time I looked out. But next thought is that the moment the net goes over, I’m responsible for those birds, feeding and cleaning, and the th...
2018-08-1943 min
True North with Dave BrisbinThe M WordDave Brisbin | 8.12.18
As a church that believes in, teaches, and practices a contemplative way of life, we take a certain amount of criticism from certain Christian circles. And as we are about to begin a workshop series looking at the lives and practice of some of the great mystics of the Christian tradition, there have been concerns raised both online and in our community. Why? What’s the controversy in the church at large over this issue? Contemplatives and mystics both believe that direct connection with God is possible right here and now, but not in words or rational thought. Be...
2018-08-1249 min
True North with Dave BrisbinEternal AlivenessDave Brisbin | 8.5.18
Had a dream the other night. Kind of like a flying dream, same feeling, but I was back in college, on campus in a cavernous common room with no furniture and students sitting in groups or alone on white, polished floor. Looking down, socks no shoes, when I realized how smoothly I could glide on the floor, I began ice skating around the room faster and faster between and around the groups of student, wind in my face, so free. Later, outside, immersed in the beauty of the campus, talking to a student about classes, I realized I...
2018-08-0541 min
True North with Dave BrisbinMeaning and CircumstanceDave Brisbin | 7.22.18
Most often, we attach meaning to circumstance. We view accidents of birth—where, when, how, and to whom we are born—as significant, along with our own accomplishments and external events that affect us. We attach good or bad labels to our circumstances based on the level of pain they bring. But when we think on even the worst things that have happened to us, if enough time has passed, if we have continued to breathe and live, we tend to find that even the worst circumstances have created cherished outcomes we never saw coming, or possibly could not...
2018-07-2238 min
True North with Dave BrisbinShoulder TapsDave Brisbin | 7.15.18
I almost don’t pick up the phone; it’s been ringing all day. Just getting into work flow again and don’t recognize the number…I watch it for several rings then grudgingly tap the screen. It’s a young Marine with a fellow corpsman driving around looking for and calling churches near the base. You’re the only one to answer the phone, he says, and goes on to tell me they are being deployed the next day for the first time and just wanted someone to pray with who “knew what they were doing…” There was a moment somew...
2018-07-1539 min
True North with Dave BrisbinDeeper HealingDave Brisbin | 7.8.18
Think of all the debates and fights between Christians. Among Christians. Between Christians and non-Christians. What are they all about? Truth? Ethics, morality, law, doctrine, church practice or style, social issues? For Christians, if it’s Scripture that informs us of truth, then every fight—whatever it’s about— is ultimately about Scripture. What we believe about Scripture dictates both what we think we know of truth and how we think we need to go about defending it. But the Bible is primarily a spiritual book conveying spiritual truths and building an awareness of unseen significance in life. Yet we f...
2018-07-0840 min