Joel

Deconstructing: Your Beliefs Need to Evolve

April 27, 2025

Don’t be afraid to let your faith and beliefs evolve. Everything in us is geared toward figuring out all the “right” things to believe and then defending them and promoting them as what everyone else needs to believe, like they’re perfect in their current form and don’t need any revision or reformation. But the real truth is being uncovered, it is evolving and it is conversation. It’s not that the truth is changing necessarily; it’s that it is still emerging. You’ve just ... Keep reading

Deconstructing is Having A Soft Grip

April 19, 2025

There is nothing wrong with having some working idea of what you believe about the world. Just know you are wrong or, at the very least, not finished learning. Come to some conclusions, but hold those conclusions softly. Soon, you will be presented with information that challenges what you think you “know”. If your grip is too tight on your current assumptions, you will not listen well and you will spend a lot of energy furiously defending the things you think you need to believe.

It is tempting ... Keep reading

Deconstructing Is Saying You Don’t Know

April 6, 2025

Be thankful for these little frailties, mistakes and woundings that routinely throw you off your path. They remind you of your true nature: you are human and wanting. When you are in pain, worried, weak, disoriented and confused, slow down and pay attention. These are your entrance into what you really need: an experience of God in God’s tenderest form. Your little weaknesses are also what keep you tender and vulnerable. That is the best thing that can happen to you.

These little setbacks and ... Keep reading

Deconstructing Is Bursting Your Own Bubble

March 19, 2025

Everyone begins their life inside some context. Inside that context, things make sense to you. People who were also born into the same circumstances live there, speak your language and have similar ways of thinking. There is nothing wrong with the place you come from. It is home. You might always feel most comfortable with people who have a similar background and come from the same place you do. The problem is when you think the way you are is the best or only way to be and you devalue others, ... Keep reading

Deconstructing is The Point

March 15, 2025

Deconstructing is about breaking yourself apart so you can become more malleable and also receptive – able to accept and handle more and more. The more things you are able to accept and love, the more you are becoming love yourself. Then you love all manner of people and things; there is nothing you don’t love. Deconstructing is also about becoming open to how big the world is and all the people who are different from you. Not everyone is like you. Your goal is to love them ALL.

We tend to ... Keep reading

Ineffable You

February 22, 2025

There is something inside you so beautiful and ferocious it cannot be fully known or expressed in words. It is your job to protect and preserve it, and to let it loose on the world when the time is right. Not everyone will honor it the way you want them to, but even if they don’t, it doesn’t lose any of its power or vitality. You will always be able to locate it and get back in touch with it in its primordial state.

The ineffable you is eternal. Not everyone remembers that all the time. (They ... Keep reading

Triangling

February 22, 2025

Peace is not made by avoiding or even just reducing the intensity of conflict, but by moving through it with eyes wide open and the knowledge and hope there is something better on the other side. We become belligerent and irresponsible in our communication when we believe there is no hope for resolution or when something we value deeply is at stake. Then we also act in contempt, believing there is nothing redeemable about the other side and that they deserve to be destroyed.

Our ... Keep reading

Valley Maker – A Couple Days

February 15, 2025

Time is just a game I play

It’s written on the ocean’s waves

Circling beyond my brain

Something I could not contain

I know it and I cannot stray

The part of me I cannot break

The loss of you beyond the gray

I’m sticking to the chosen ways

I picture you inside my brain

Reminding me to say my grace

Reminding me to be amazed

I missed ... Keep reading