I’d invite you to exercise care if you decide to watch this powerful three-minute TED Talk by Stacey Kramer. Don’t worry, it’s not graphic, or manipulative, or violent. Not at all. But it is very, very challenging and you may not agree with Stacey’s conclusion and conviction. And that’s all right. But it’s something to be prepared for. Indeed, I suspect that if you or a loved one has experienced what Stacey has experienced, you will likely react powerfully to her Talk, whether positively or negatively. Keep in mind, this is one person’s experience. And it is valid. And if you disagree, or have had a different experience,...

When I first created the weekly “Dear Working Preacher” letter at workingpreacher.org, I realized almost immediately that there was something I could do for preachers each week that was as important as it was easy: say thank you. All I wanted to do in that last sentence or two was to offer simple recognition of the hard work and dedication that preachers bring to their calling and to let them know that someone noticed…and appreciated it. Interesting, of all the comments and emails I’ve received over the years about the value of that letter, the one thing folks commented on more than anything else were those closing words of...

Who will you be in 10 years? If you’re like most people, you’ll probably immediately answer that you’ll be pretty much the same, just a little older and (hopefully!) wiser. But according to psychologist Dan Gilbert, author of the wonderful Stumbling on Happiness, you’ll actually be a far different person that you imagine. Why? Because we live with the convenient and helpful myth that the person we are today is our “true” self, the self toward which everything up to now has been pointing. It’s a convenient myth in that it doesn’t take much effort to maintain and doesn’t require us to anticipate changing all that much, and...

We all probably have our short list of the great dangers our world faces. Indeed, since the development and use of the atomic bomb, psychologists have talked about the “free-floating” anxiety of our time, an unnamed but nearly all-pervasive concern about the fate of ourselves and the world. So what’s on your list? Environmental degradation? Diminishing fossil fuels and other natural resources? Overwhelming poverty? The chance of devastating war? Certainly those are all on my list, too. But above all of them is my concern that we are increasingly living fractured lives, disconnected from each other and all too-often...

Ask most parents what they most hope for their child, and one of the immediate answers will be that we want our children to be happy. Sometimes that’s intensified, as in, “While I hope they find a good job and lead a good life, all I really want is for my child is happy.” That goal and desire, as Jennifer Senior explains, is so ingrained in current parenting culture that we don’t even question it. But maybe we should. Just as we were willing to ask whether happiness is a goal or a by-product, so also might we question what the primary role, responsibility and goal of parenting is. Because if you believe that...