Posts belonging to Category Care of the Soul
Posted by Rev. David on May 14, 2011
This week is Candidating Week for the congregation that I am serving as an Interim Minister. Now, by all indications Candidating Week has gone well, and the congregation will vote tomorrow on whether to call Jeff Liebmann as their new settled minister. What will be with that will be… and that is not what I [...]
Categories: Care of the Soul, Humor, Ministry, UUFOM
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Tags: candidate minsiter, candidating week, David Pyle, interim ministry, Johnny English, Military, military chaplain, ministerial time off, Mr. Bean, responsibility, Rowan Atkinson, staycation, time off, vacation
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4 comments
Posted by Rev. David on March 17, 2011
This is a repost of an article from each of the last two years. This is a hard time of year for me. I guess we all have these times of the year, where the past experiences of our lives fill up the time we spend living today… times in which what we live is [...]
Categories: Care of the Soul, Turnings
| Tags: berevement, birthday, birthdays are hard, dad, David Pyle, father and son, father's and son's, father's death, grief, happy birthday, hope, loss, Lynn C. Pyle, Lynn Pyle, Military, MSG Pyle, relationship, responsibility, soldier, St. Patrick's Day
| 5 comments
Posted by Rev. David on November 30, 2010
Yesterday, I was driving home from an ordination in Rockville Maryland, and I took a route that carried me through the Appalachian Mountains of Western Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania… and I felt at home. I felt at home in a way that is hard to describe. As I spent the night in a hotel [...]
Categories: Care of the Soul, History, Inspiration
| Tags: activism, appalachia, appalachian, Appalachian State University, atrocity, beauty, Cumberland, East Tennessee State University, ecology, environment, home, I-68, justice, liberal, liberalism, Maryland, MD, mining, mountain, mountain-top removal, mountains, National Freeway, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Prophetic Voice, responsibility, serene, stop mountain-top mining, Tennessee, West Virginia
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Posted by Rev. David on June 12, 2010
The last month has been a liminal space for me, as I have intentionally stayed in a space of not-knowing when it comes to what the next few years will bring. Perhaps there is a key to understanding our faith tradition in such liminality.
Categories: Care of the Soul, God, Reflection on Quotes, Spiritual Practice, theology, Turnings, UU Movement
| Tags: change, doubt, faith, liminal, liminality, Ministry, not-knowing, religion, Spiritual Practice, theology, transformation, transition, Unitarian, Unitarian Universalism, Unitarian Universalist, Universalism, Universalist, UU
| 5 comments
Posted by Rev. David on May 27, 2010
I have come to the belief that what makes our culture so afraid of grief is that we often have buried within us layer upon layer of losses, one piled on top of another, the way that sand piles up upon the ruins of ancient cities, gets packed down, and turns to dirt, clay, and [...]
Categories: Care of the Soul, Ministry, Pastoral Care
| Tags: bereavement, berevement, death, dying, fear, grief, griefs, grieving, hospice, loss, mourn, mourning, relationship, sadness, stages of grief
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Posted by Rev. David on May 1, 2010
1. Telling the stories about our military service helps, but we veterans are taught that it does not. Almost every program for helping veterans come to terms with their military service is based upon learning to tell our stories, and yet the model of the veteran in our society is one of silence. Veterans have [...]
Categories: Care of the Soul, Military, Military Chaplaincy, Ministry
| Tags: active listening, airman, debriefing, family, listen, listening, Marine, sailor, soldier, story, tell, veteran, veterans, war story, warstory
| 4 comments
Posted by Rev. David on April 17, 2010
I am fascinated with how we human beings create narratives or stories, and then derive our meanings from them. In politics, this manifests in several different ways, one of the most obvious being how a “narrative” is created by any successful candidacy for high political office (Obama the Reformer, McCain the Mavrick, Biden the Good [...]
Categories: Care of the Soul, Pastoral Care, politics, Social Engagement
| Tags: activism, activist, advertising, common wisdom, ethics scandal, image, judges, judicial activism, judicial appointments, justice, legislate from the bench, lobbyist, narrative, narrative theory, political image, political scandal, political story, politics, public relations
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Posted by Rev. David on April 11, 2010
I want to posit a few aspects of my theory of the primacy of human emotion. The purpose for this article is that I am currently developing, as a part of my Clinical Pastoral Education Residency, both a theory and theology of Pastoral Care. I am well aware that this project is rife with paradoxes and irony… [...]
Categories: Care of the Soul, Ministry, Pastoral Care
| Tags: anthropology, cpe, emotion, emotional creatures, emotionalism, family systems theory, human paradox, narrative theory, paradox, Pastoral Care, pastoral theory, primacy of emotion, primacy of reason, rationalism, rationalize, reason, theology, theory, theory of emotion
| 2 comments
Posted by Rev. David on March 17, 2010
This is a repost of an article from the last 2 years. This is a hard time of year for me. I guess we all have these times of the year, where the past experiences of our lives fill up the time we spend living today… times in which what we live is dominated by our remembrances. [...]
Categories: Care of the Soul, Turnings
| Tags: faith, father's and son's, growth, Happy Birthday Dad, relationship
| 2 comments
Posted by Rev. David on January 31, 2010
I want to be very clear at the beginning of this article that it applies to the religious right, the religious center, and the religious left, and I’m going to focus on the religious left. This is something within human nature, not within specific religious traditions. If there is a difference in how this article applies [...]
Categories: Care of the Soul, theology, UU Movement
| Tags: certainity, Equality, faith, formism, fundamentalism, God, idyllic forms, justice, love, spirit, spiritual, Spiritual Practice, standing on the side of love, totality, ultimacy
| 1 comment
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