7/10/2025
I lived once in what was left of rural Gig Harbor, Washington. At the far end of our road, spiked with fir tree crenelations, was Crescent Lake. It wasn’t much, but water is water, and I’ll take it.
A stream fed the lake, a stream that meandered through the front of our property, weaving slowly between ginormous blueberries and old-growth firs. Deer, owls, and even salmon played in the field and in the stream, though the salmon came only once a year, spawning between the bay and the lake, their bright silver color turned to mossy green, their skin hanging like birch bark.
It was probably in the 1950s when someone planted poplar trees between the road and our fence. A windbreak, maybe, or protection from big-city gawkers. Now these trees stood tall and straight, alert as pawns. They were a
pain during the spring, raining pounds of cotton onto every surface. I raked and mowed and raked again, and, well, Nature has her way, and she’s done when she’s done.
I came to love this setting, thinking often of my favorite author, the great Russian Count Leo, who wandered often down the drive of his estate, Yasnaya Pollyanna, to have a think, calling to his wife – when they were talking – that he’s going to ‘walk through the poplars.’ I would do the same thing and wander down to the field for a think, grabbing a handful of huckleberries and staring up at the poplars, hoping that the spirit who woke in Count Tolstoy would burn in me, too. I’m still staring.
So. I record here one long collection of essays about transformation. Entries are dated, but those are the only breaks. If you’re looking for anything, you’ll have to search for it.
Enjoy and comment. Selah.
7/11/2025
I didn’t know it then-we never do-but the Hound of Heaven chased me from the start. My earliest memories are of Top Cat and reading, and of trying to figure things out. Mostly trains, car models, and TVs. And I read every book on evolution in the Tacoma Public Library by the time I turned twelve…not just kids’ books, but textbooks and journals, too.
Then one night when I was maybe twelve or thirteen, Mom and Dad went out with friends from high school and came home at midnight walking like sailors on a rolling deck. They stopped to grab the rail before announcing that we were going to church in the morning. Both Mom and Dad grew up with religion – Dad as a conservative evangelical and Mom as a catholic/orthodox – but these friends talked all night about their Lutheran church. They were hip too, swinging away at the Grass Shack filled to the brim with dancing, smoking, and drinking. “Lutherans don’t care,” they said, “G wants us to enjoy ourselves.” This appealed immensely to my parents who generally view religion then like many still do: an old bearded man in the sky ready to beat you with a stick if you looked at him cross-eyed. Believers and churchgoers out having fun at the bar was alien but welcome to Mom and Dad. Church and fun: who would’ve thought!
So, we went to church. Mom and Dad loved it. I hated it. To make things worse, I was put in confirmation class with younger kids because I missed my age group. I suffered through it and joked with kids in class that at least when we were confirmed, we could drink wine.
All was fine until I graduated from class. I’ve since learned there are times you shut up and nod your head yes, but I didn’t do it here or now. I didn’t want to be confirmed and had no interest in going up front to say, “I do.”
I didn’t.
Why should I (a budding scientist and logician) pretend I believe only to make other people happy? Other people, of course, being my parents who 1.) brought me into the world and 2.) financed every good thing I had, especially food. We discussed this often, and by often, I mean with loud words.
I have no recollection of what Mom thought, but Dad argued that these are the things we do at church. We don’t always have to agree but, in fact, we go through the motions to go through the motions. An odd and lousy argument, but in the end, I relented. I don’t remember what happened or why, but I knelt with the kids in my class and we drank wine. People clapped and Pastor Potoff beamed. In my memory, this is the one and only time I’ve taken communion at a Lutheran church.
7/13/2025
Need a shop set up? Man. I can do it. I can set up your bandsaw to cut veneer as thin as a dollar bill. Are you trying to lose weight? I can design a chart so glorious you can publish it on the cover of Nature. Even regarding transformation, I took the time to surf my bookshelves and the virtual bookshelves of a dozen sites, and listed 93 books to read as part of my lifetime transformation plan.
Don’t fall into the same trap I am so prone to: planning and setting up and making lists IS NOT the doing of transformation.(1)
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with a list. Nothing wrong with writing out a plan and then checking things off as you go (and, yes, I am that person who will add an item to the checklist just so I can check it off…) In fact, there’s an entire culture of checkoff lists now, as life and business have become so immensely complex. I supervised a chemistry department once at a nuclear plant and, let me tell ya, I had a list two pages long and slaved away on the thing every day. Hospitals, engineers, and even authors use check-off lists simply because there are so many things to remember. And that’s the point of the list: it remembers so you don’t have to. So you can focus on other things. The list remembers for you. Therein lies the magic.
But-and be sure you get this-a list about spirituality and transformation IS NOT spirituality and transformation. It’s a tool to give you time and brain space to work on transformation. To pray and to serve meals and to spend time in thoughtful reading. We transform by practicing apprenticeship. By spending time with the Master, by watching the Master, by learning from the Master, and from doing what the Master does.
1. Any sentence with italics and bold-all-caps must be important. TAKE NOTE.
7/15/2025
It’s Not Fair!
We struggle with shards of a reality we think is broken. Maybe there are no shards and maybe reality just is? My daughter’s famous struggle-famous because she shouts every hour to the entire neighborhood-is “But it’s not fair!” Lots of people will chime in with her, and what we are really saying is that life, and the world, and relationships, and stuff shouldn’t be like this. But it is. And your sense of what should and shouldn’t be won’t change that.
And it doesn’t matter much.
“The folder should be placed right here. Alphabetically. Right? How can I find it if people won’t put it away, right? Sheesh!”
“You want daycare at the high school? C’mon! Sixteen-year-olds getting pregnant? You want to support that?”
There’s a common theme here for every single person: we are the arbiters of right and wrong. We impose our ideas on what is and want to bend it to satisfy us. What’s interesting is that at the very moment that we impose right or wrong on a thing, we move everyone who thinks differently out of the way. Their ideas aren’t important. We speak the truth and they don’t sync.
But – just like you regarding others – no one cares what you think and you’re wasting your time. Shoulds and shouldn’ts mean little. This is nothing new. No one has ever cared.
The folders are sorted as they are, and people make mistakes putting things away. Young girls get pregnant. You don’t have to like this reality, and you can always change it. But you have to recognize a thing before you can change it.
Listen to yourself this week. You’ll be surprised at how many times you complain about how something is off-kilter. Recognizing this is the first step in seeing reality as it is. And accepting it. Accepting reality. Then think about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s advice: never complain about a thing unless you have a plan to fix it.
6/26/2025 (Syncs with 6/20/2025)
There’s a danger when studying transformation. People make it sound easy. Mostly these are people who want to sell you stuff. Mostly, they tell you what to do.
“The magic is in the doing,” they say.
So, we do devotions for an entire month. Every day. We take the kids to church every Sunday for eight weeks straight. WE WILL BE SPIRITUAL! And then…we’re not. Sunday comes and the kids are fighting, and you forgot to do the wash, and you’re working so hard! Then you remember: you didn’t read your devotional on Thursday morning. That’s why the world’s falling apart.
You forgot to read your devotional.
You beat yourself up all the way to church while the kids bicker about Fruit Loops. You settle into your normal seats, and the preacher talks about Jesus’s morning routine. Every morning, the disciples look for Him, and there he is again, lost in the garden. And here we are again, they say, making pancakes and getting ready for the day. What is He doing? The pastor answers for you: DEVOTIONS! And you missed yours on Thursday. What a rat you are.
This is true and not true. (Not the rat part…) Here’s a caveat: I do devotions and have on and off for decades. I’ve done the same little routine – a rite, if you will – for ages and it’s deeply meaningful to me.
So, what is true?
The truth is that devotions, quiet time, a morning ritual, an evening prayer…are good things. Good things not because we do them, but in how they put us before the Master. This should always be the point, but often isn’t.
What is not true?
There’s no objective value in reading a devotional every day or in reading three Bible chapters. There’s no holiness conferred on you. There’s no tic added to your column because you prayed.
In fact, faith and the Christian life is a relationship. It’s about spending time with the Master, hearing from the Master, and doing what the Master says. Anything that moves the apprentice in this direction is a good thing. Anything that doesn’t is a distraction.
Selah
Truths told
Do not mistake planning for doing. 6/20/2025, 6/26/2025
Make friends with reality. 6/21/2025