teaching – 300 words a day

How Cliff Schimmels changed my life. I think.

It’s not just Nurses Week. It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, too. So here’s an appreciation I wrote a few years ago. It’s still true. It’s still a challenge. +++ Sometimes one conversation changes the course of your life for good. You are heading one direction and someone pours counsel and direction and affirmation into you. Suddenly, […]

by Jon Swanson

Who you hang out with can change you.

Peter and John stood in front of the leaders of their tribe. Imagine a random Catholic talking to the Pope and cardinals, an ordinary citizen in front of the Supreme Court or the President’s cabinet, a student in front of the university president and faculty, you in front of the people you grew up being […]

by Jon Swanson

learning while saying a little prayer.

“As a pastor I was charged with, among other things, teaching people to pray, helping them to give voice to the entire experience of being human, and to do it both honestly and thoroughly.” That’s what Eugene Peterson wrote. Give people a sense of what is possible and acceptable and available. Give them a sense […]

by Jon Swanson

How I lost and still won.

I didn’t win the contest. The prize was a free online course about care of the soul. I had read from most of the course materials but, as I said in the email, “I’m at a point of needing to be “encouraged” to go through the material in a structured way, though I’ve read from several […]

by Jon Swanson

How Cliff Schimmels changed my life. I think.

Sometimes one conversation changes the course of your life for good. You are heading one direction and someone pours counsel and direction and affirmation into you. Suddenly, you are heading another direction. That happened to me sometime during the spring of 1980. I say “sometime” because I can’t remember the conversation. I graduated from college in […]