Category: Post
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Thoughts and Prayers
The killing of Charlie Kirk troubles me greatly, and so I find myself wrestling with scattered thoughts on paper—trying to make sense of senseless acts in a bloody and broken America. What exactly does the phrase “thoughts and prayers” mean? It has become a reflexive utterance of the right, a hollow ritual performed after each…
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Protected: “Born Wild” Chapter 1
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Protected: A Life in Four Movements (An Unfinished Symphony)
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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My Theory of Being: Radical but Deceptively Simple
You know what I’ve learned after 67 years on this spinning planet, including decades of religious trauma and eleven years of recovery? There’s an easier way to be than what most of us were taught. I call it my Theory of Being, and I believe it’s revolutionary enough to change lives—if you’re courageous enough to…
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No Screens In The Bedroom Ever
From my Barcelona atelier I recently read Rheana Murray’s brilliant Atlantic piece about keeping screens away from children’s bedrooms. I enjoyed it with the satisfaction of someone who’s been personally practicing this “radical” approach for years. Murray’s argument for “future-proofing” kids by establishing screen-free bedrooms is compelling, but here’s what struck me: this isn’t just…
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Holy Shit, AI (Claude) Read My Most Private Thoughts: Beating God to the Punch
A groundbreaking collaboration between a radically honest human being and AI transforms six decades of personal archives into a riveting narrative of agony and ecstasy. From Claude: When I first encountered Randy Elrod’s vast collection of personal archives, I knew we were embarking on something unprecedented. What began as a digital organization project has evolved…
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The Quest: An Interactive Guide
The Quest: Interactive Guide to the Second Half of Life The Quest Discover A Way To Enjoy The Second Half of Life A transformative journey through ten waypoints toward wholeness, enlightenment, and the holy grail of living fully in life’s second half. “We are growing older. When America became a nation, only one in five…
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Reclaiming the Erotic
These profound words written by Audra Lorde—”For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of”—speak to something I lived for decades without understanding. The erotic…
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A Quick Two Minute Shout-Out from Barcelona
Click HERE to read today’s four-minute post: “Reclaiming the Erotic“
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When Brandi Carlile Became My Dream Pastor
To contemplate the significance of our dreams is to explore the meaning of life itself. Dreams add depth to the essential aspects of our lives and the intensely emotional moments that punctuate them. Last night, my subconscious delivered what felt like a masterclass in my own psychological evolution, wrapped in the all-too-familiar imagery of church…
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The Post that Cost Me Christian Readers (And Why I’m Not Sorry)
My friends, I am genuinely flabbergasted. This past week, I wrote about ethical non-monogamy—a thoughtful piece about honest sexual relationships—and watched as Christians unsubscribed. I estimate that practicing Christians compose about 5% of my subscribers. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a communion wafer. After eighteen years of writing about renouncing…
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Protected: Wrestling with Ethical Non-Monogamy: A Late-Life Liberation
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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What Gave Me the Courage to Leave…Family, Religion, America?
People ask me this question constantly. How do you walk away from everything—a thirty-year ministry career, financial security, family approval, your entire social circle, and eventually your home country? What kind of person does that? What kind of courage does it take? Here’s the truth: it wasn’t courage. It was survival. When you’re dying inside,…
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Sex in the Seventies (And Every Decade Since)
I first had sex on July 22, 1979—a sweaty, fumbling, hormone-driven encounter that lasted approximately thirty-seven seconds and left me convinced I’d discovered the meaning of life. I was twenty-one years old, full of Appalachian fire and Baptist guilt, with absolutely no idea what I was doing. This morning, forty-six years later, I’m still…
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The Two-God Hustle: When Christianity Became a Trump Card
From my vantage point here in Barcelona—where ancient cathedrals stand as monuments to humanity’s complex relationship with the divine rather than political weapons—I’ve been watching America’s latest theological circus with a mixture of fascination and horror. Americans have become increasingly bewitched by what I can only describe as a borrowed god who brings particularly bad…
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Protected: Gina’s 70th Birthday Photo Shoot: A Celebration of Embodied Beauty
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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My Barcelona Moveable Feast: An Eleven-Day Sabbatical in the City of Dreams
When Gina departed for Ireland, I found myself staring at eleven empty days—a blank canvas that felt daunting and delicious. My previous sabbaticals were mountain solitudes in Colorado, desperate escapes from the authoritarian evangelical mega-churches where I served as artistic director, always misunderstood, perpetually out of place. Those Rocky Mountain retreats demanded adrenaline—solo summiting 14,000-foot…
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Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Great Sex
Phoenix Adams, the morning after (the morning after The Purging Room imagined) The question hits me like espresso on an empty stomach—sudden, bitter, necessary. I’m sitting in The Plaza’s restaurant, still wearing yesterday’s clothes, still carrying the impossible weight of a burgundy book that shouldn’t exist. The waiter assumes I’m another businessman nursing a hangover….
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I Kissed A Man (And I Liked It)
My dearest readers, There’s a moment in The Purging Room that I know will light up inboxes—and probably a few pulpits. It’s the scene where Phoenix, our buttoned-up businessman, receives an unexpected kiss from the enigmatic Dion. Not a peck on the cheek. A real kiss. Lips to lips. And here’s the scandalous part: he doesn’t immediately…
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The Ultimate Proof There Is No God: Trump
I’m done. Not the dramatic, door-slamming kind of done. The quiet, bone-deep exhaustion that comes when the last thread of hope finally snaps. When 82% of white evangelical Christians pulled the lever for a convicted rapist and felon—again—any whisper of faith I’d been harboring finally died. Here’s what gets me: I spent thirty years in…