What is your relationship with brushing your teeth - specifically, do you look forward to it, dread it, or not care? Longsuffering. As an adjective, it simply describes patiently enduring difficult th...  Read More

Have you ever gotten good at something on accident, just through repetition? The longsufferer is keenly aware of their exhaustion, of their weaknesses, and of the ways they are concerned that they won...  Read More

Who is a part of your community? Who can/do you call when things get rough or when you have questions about life? Who are your people? A Spotlight is a way of looking at a particular concept through d...  Read More

What is the most under appreciated kitchen utensil?  Why do we do things? What do we do them for? It can be easy to answer these questions in a transactional way. If you do this, you'll get that. Howe...  Read More

Longsuffering does something to a person. We tend to frame longsuffering as something to survive, to "endure until it ends." In many cases, though, the long stretch of it becomes a kind of slow renova...  Read More

What is something to which you would say you are "devoted"? Once a person is aware of their state of "long-suffering," they can experience a change. Decisions that might have previously been challengi...  Read More

Have you ever had a dream that didn't make any sense? What happened in it?  If part of what makes for "longsuffering" is a sustained period of not fitting, the next question is: what's causing the poo...  Read More

What would be non-negotiable in your version of a "lazy day"? There are different levels of comfortable and different levels of "unguarded." It can be one level when you're in a meeting, another when ...  Read More

Creating safety for others isn't simple, and we can't always control how people respond when invited to lower their guard. We can, however, control what we do when that moment arrives. Vulnerability i...  Read More

Every guarded person has a reason: a wound, a rejection, a moment (or series of them) when being known turned out to be dangerous. This leads to managing what people could see - and for a while, it fe...  Read More

If meeting some kind of worthiness standard is no longer the method by which a person finds their way in, how is order kept and safety for all parties maintained? The darkness that is gatekeeping and ...  Read More

We spend enormous energy trying to earn approval, whether growing for it, shrinking for it, or reshaping ourselves to get it - and communities spend enormous energy dispensing it, withholding it, or u...  Read More