The Chinese Grocery Stores of my Childhood

I grew up at this corner, 8th Avenue and Balboa. This particular picture was taken 1939. Though this grocery store predates me by some 30 years, It was still a grocery when I was growing up. In fact, we had lots of grocery stores in the 1970s, seemingly on every corner. Besides this store, I…

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Falling Upward: Wilderness

(Credits: Art installation and portrait credit Bethany L. Herron Photographer ; Photographer Event Photo credit SMG Foto “There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality.” – Thomas Merton My unreality was thinking that people would accept me more if I knew more, if I did more. Unreality was ultimately…

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Falling Upward: Authenticity

  I’ve spent so much of my life trying to prove myself to others. And a lot of this proving has been done on a stage, as I wrote about in the second paragraph here.  In the picture above the lamps shining on me denote stage lights, to represent how the stage was a place…

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Falling Upward: Work

“Work” is the name of this art installation. This being my first post of 2017, it’s not because my writing has gone dormant. If anything, I’ve done my most significant, painstaking, yet rewarding writing this past year.  I’ve been busily casting my story into words, art, and video that I presented at a dinner and…

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Embracing my 50th Birthday

I was born in 1967. Turning 50 is one of those “never thought it would ever arrive” milestones. I remember when my dad turned 50, in 1985. I always thought it peculiar how my dad could pull Frank Sinatra and Patti Page songs into his head from 1955 as if it were yesterday. Today, I…

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The Gospel: The Ultimate Covering for our Shame

  “For the joy set out for him he endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” Heb 12:2 (NET) Jesus took on all our shame so that our shame can be ultimately covered. My endless quest for “covering”        …

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I killed Mr. Spock in 2014

        “I am the door for the sheep. 10:8 All who came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 10:9 I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved, and will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill…

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