Month: October 2011

you can always tell the health of an urban neighborhood by…

/ Paul Burkhart / 3 Comments

… the number of trick-or-treaters.

I just frustrated a few middle schoolers (way too old to go trick-or-treating) who knocked on our door and were miffed that we had no candy to give. They were probably also confused by the fact that both my roommate and I had yelled “come in!” in reply to the door-knocks.

We had done this because last year my roommates and I bought a big thing of candy in anticipation of the trick-or-treaters and none showed up. And so we expected this year to be the same. We didn’t even think about the chance of any trick-or-treaters coming. But, alas, they won’t stop knocking on our door tonight; the street is teeming with them. At this point, we’re just ignoring the knocks, not wanting to incur the wrath of any more children.

So much must have happened in the past year in our particular neighborhood of Graduate Hospital in Southwest Center City Philadelphia. It’s exciting to watch all that is happening in this amazing city we call home.

Retelling the Story (in crisis, loss, & healing)

/ Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

Why does healing take time? Have you ever asked yourself that? Why does pain, heartbreak, and loss seem to have a very real lifespan it must go through before the process seems completely done?

As I’ve said several times before on this blog, we humans live on the basis of story. Our life, our world, and our faith provide our lives with a grand “narrative” in which all of our “sub-plots” find shape. We can’t help but use this shape of the present story to fashion some sort of idea of where this story is going. We’ve all experienced this when reading a book. The entire time, we have a guess of where the plot is heading; as we receive more information, we naturally readjust our expectations and thoughts as to the goal or end.

In short, the only way we know to make sense of the various aspects of our lives is to give them shape, narrative, and an anticipated goal towards which they are moving. This is the only way we know to justify each step forward we take in this career, relationship, etc. It gives us our bearings and a point of reference.

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one of the manliest quotes ever

/ Paul Burkhart / 4 Comments

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

–Theodore Roosevelt (thanks, David Schrott)