perspective on Difficult People

One of my favorite sayings is, no matter how difficult it is to hear, “Reality is always your friend.”

There's a humorous, apocryphal story about a man standing by a river. On the opposite bank, a woman calls out, "How do I get to the other side of the river?" The man replies, "YOU A...

Please Aslan, said Polly, could you say something to – to unfrighten him? . . . I cannot tell that to this old sinner, and I cannot comfort him either, he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If...

One helpful, practical tool to understand our blind spot is what’s called the Johari Window, an image developed as a counseling tool in the 1950s. Subjects were given a list of fifty-six adjectives, a...

The key for successful personal relationships and ministry is to understand and accept others as having a viewpoint as worthy of consideration as our own.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

What Determines Happiness?  Imagine a movie theater full of a hundred people. These hundred individuals represent the full continuum of happiness: Some are exceptionally happy, others less so, and ...

If you can’t get out of it, get into it.

It’s easy to label what we consider “good things” in our lives as gifts from God and to welcome them with gratitude. But when difficult things happen, we don’t look at them as part of God’s good plan ...

Who will tell you the truth? An enemy who hates you bitterly, and a friend who loves you dearly.

Context If you're jumping into Luke partway through the story, it helps to do one of those "Previously On..." clips you see at the beginning of an episode in a TV series. The most impo...

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

The marginalized and downtrodden receive special insights. They are the ones who can see the pain and the injustice that are killing the world. It is to these voices that we must turn

All day long, all of us are framing and reframing our lives. We talk about the memory of our adorable but sexist grandpa. We label ourselves as movie critics or introverts or justice-lovers. We say th...

Pragmatism may be defined simply as the approach to reality that defines truth as “that which works.” The pragmatist is concerned about results, and the results determine the truth. The problem with t...

Often we become apathetic in our lives until we face a severe storm. Whether loss of a job, health crisis, loss of a loved one, or financial struggle; God often brings storms into our lives to change ...

Parker Palmer’s book Let Your Life Speak arrested my heart a few years back. It begins with a poem by William Stafford, “Ask Me”, that begs this question: “Some time when the river is ice ask me mista...

A man who was fishing one day noticed that the fisherman next to him threw the big fish he caught back into the water, while keeping the small ones. This went on all day until the first man couldn’t h...

Edward T. Hall likened the effects of culture to an iceberg. Some aspects of a culture are overt, in clear view above the waterline, so to speak. But most are hidden deep below the surface, forming th...

Helen Keller, the blind-and-deaf woman who made history by learning to overcome her disabilities, was once asked if there was anything worse than being blind. She answered, “Oh yes! There is something...

In Budapest, a man goes to the rabbi and complains, “Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can I do?” The rabbi answers, “Take your goat into the room with you.” The man in...

Suppose we hear an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness...

History is always a matter of trying to think into the minds of people who think differently from ourselves.

While serving as British Prime Minister, Lloyd George had to deal with World War I, an economic depression, and the Sinn Fein movement attempting to effect Irish liberation, as well as many other smal...

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.

Keep yourself clean and bright, for you are the window through which you must see the world.

Holy One, grant me Patience in the waiting Raise in me   Steadfastness Resilience Persevering Make me a child of hope and becoming New life takes time to root and grow and bear fruit It takes trus...

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

In her book Invitation to Retreat , Ruth Haley Barton shares some of the many insights she has had since she began intentionally taking inattentional retreats to re-connect with God and her own d...