Leigh Waggoner

A time to keep silence

Words ... words ... and more words. We are inundated by them. Words written and words spoken. Words meant to convince. Words meant to manipulate. Words that express emotions. Words that speak...

DATE: Feb. 13, 2019 | COLUMN: Thoughts Along the Way

A yearly reminder to live in faith daily

New Year’s. A date on the calendar to mark new beginnings. New diets. New exercise programs. New commitments to those things we know we should be doing but we aren’t. I suspect most of these things...

DATE: Dec. 31, 2018 | COLUMN: Thoughts Along the Way

The last gasps of Patriarchy?

Years ago, I sat on the couch in my living room facing an investigator from the State Board of Medical Examiners. He had come all the way from Madison to my house in the woods in northwest...

DATE: Oct. 16, 2018 | COLUMN: Thoughts Along the Way

The only thing to fear ...

While the image I carry of myself as a backpacker may no longer align with reality, from experience I know the validity of these words: “We pack for our fears.” More than once I have come out of...

DATE: Sept. 20, 2018 | COLUMN: Thoughts Along the Way

Ignore nature, and live beyond your means

“To everything there is a season ...” So says the Biblical writer of Ecclesiastes. Hinduism, Buddhism and other Eastern religions impart a similar wisdom that speaks to the seasonal nature of life....

DATE: Aug. 23, 2018 | COLUMN: Thoughts Along the Way

Revisiting the Garden of Eden

Listening to a TED talk last year, I jotted down the following quote from the speaker whose name is now lost to me: “Our imagination has become an ecological force.” Trying to locate the source of...

DATE: July 22, 2018 | COLUMN: Thoughts Along the Way

The structure that lets us grow

The royal wedding is finally old news. All the extravagance of the ceremony and the sermon by the black bishop from the United States – these have, at long last, disappeared from the news feed. The...

DATE: June 13, 2018 | COLUMN: Thoughts Along the Way

What became of the virtue of civility?

Civil discourse these days is less and less civil. This is not news. For those of us who are “of an age,” we have something with which to compare how our society is currently functioning. We...

DATE: May 15, 2018 | COLUMN: Thoughts Along the Way

At the U.N., shame in the U.S.

The whole world was there! Well, maybe not the whole world numerically, and maybe not the whole world even representationally, but it felt like the whole world was there. Last month, I had the...

DATE: April 18, 2018 | COLUMN: Thoughts Along the Way

Hope will rise when we quiet our minds

You might be surprised to learn that Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is not an optimist. Neither is his great friend and conversation partner, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, also...

DATE: March 14, 2018 | COLUMN: Thoughts Along the Way

Does dogma sometimes silence you? Me too

In the light of Harvey Weinstein, #MeToo, and the rising movement of women who are speaking the truth of their lives, what can the Bible, a 2,000-year-old document, possibly have to say to women...

DATE: Feb. 14, 2018 | COLUMN: Thoughts Along the Way

A place of eternal torment? Never

I recently had a conversation with a woman that broke my heart. Let’s call her Ann. Ann is intelligent, inquisitive, and has a syndrome that leaves it difficult to tell by her behavior what her age...

DATE: Jan. 28, 2018 | COLUMN: Thoughts Along the Way

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