The Circles You Didn’t Know You Were Drawing
People tell me they’re an open book, and then tell me how badly it went. The problem is almost never honesty. It’s proportion — and after twenty-five years I draw it as a set of circles.
Entries by
The Difference Between Spiritual Direction and Coaching
Jim and Lynette offer both coaching and spiritual direction, and they get asked the difference more than almost anything else. Coaching is future-oriented — where do you want to go, and what is in the way. Spiritual direction is present-oriented — where are you, and what is already stirring. Here is how to tell which one fits the season you are in.
Ninety Trucks, Ninety Driveways, Ninety People
Varment Guard ran ninety black and gold trucks, kept identical on purpose, sent home every night to sit in ninety driveways across central Ohio. The internet now looks like that yard — all the recognition with nothing behind it. Jim on borrowed language, the false self, and the question that matters more than sameness: is there anyone in the cab?
Getting It Right and Back To The Log
My father carved in wood. When the slope of a cheek came out a quarter inch wrong, he set aside six weeks of work and went out for a new log — because you cannot paint over wood. Jim on writing as a daily examen, on the sentence that costs you something, and on naming out loud that there is an AI in his process — and exactly where its usefulness ends.
What Silence Does That Words Cannot
Silence is not the absence of something — it is a presence with its own work to do. On what the research says silence does to the body, why we rush to fill it, the season I had no words at all, and why the most important thing a person says is usually their second sentence. Includes two practices you can try today.
Intent Verses Impact and Its Causes
“I didn’t mean it that way” is usually true, and it almost never helps. Two ordinary biases guarantee a gap between what we intend and what lands — and the research on apologies shows the element we lean on hardest is the one that repairs least. On sarcasm that drew tears, an apology that softened something hard, and the three questions restorative justice asks instead.
When Matter Becomes Prayer
Most of us were handed a quiet assumption: that the spiritual life is the part of life that is not physical. Brother Lawrence, decades in a monastery kitchen, said otherwise — “I turn my little omelet in the pan for the love of God.” A companion to Thin Places, on dishwater and dough and the road under your feet, a book found on my father’s kitchen island, and why matter does not become prayer — we do.
Thin Places That You Don’t Notice
The Celts called it a thin place — where the distance between heaven and earth narrows almost to nothing. We attach the phrase to far-off islands, but their own prayers blessed the kindling of the morning fire and the making of the bed. Jim and Lynette bring thin places all the way home: a back porch in the snow, a bedside, your own body, and the person sitting across from you.
THE BRIDGE BETWEEN US PART TWO OF TWO
Three people, one hard problem, three kinds of frustration — and they are not actually disagreeing. They are speaking three first languages. Part Two of two: why most personality conflicts are really translation problems, what each center is truly asking, and why restorative justice — who was harmed, what do they need, whose obligation is it to repair — turns out to be three-centered justice.
The Three Intelligences You Already Carry
Walk into a room and one person reads the feeling in it, another analyzes what’s happening, a third simply senses whether to move toward or away. The Enneagram calls these the three Centers of Intelligence — Head, Heart, and Body — and we carry all three, even as we lean hard on one. Part One of two: the intelligences you already have, and the practice of making connections between them.
