Hello and welcome to all 45. The spiritual uplift you’ll find in BridgesUS Academy is a welcome, and practical, antidote to what swirls around us each day.

This disaster reminds us, through you and others I know who have lost everything inanimate they loved, how small we are in the vastness of Creation, and how the real importance and measure of our lives is the goodness we share with others. BridgesUS is a wonderful “device” for doing just that, but it can’t be the only way we reach out to those in need.

Reverend Jim, you have asked one of the most important questions of our age: how do we “show up” in someone else’s world? Your visit to Victoria’s mom, and the joy it brought to you both, is a reminder of the outpouring of happiness when vaccinations and other preventative measures during the great wave of Covid-19 finally allowed us to be…

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Was Jesus being literal? If by “bread” and “fish” he meant showing unconditional love and understanding to our children, was he was pointing to those places of goodness in our soul which we sometimes cannot access, or we ignore, for whatever reason?

My prayers are almost always that we use the power of goodness in each of us, the power we call God, to do what we know from the Bible is God’s good work, to the best of each of our physical and mental abilities.

“A story is worth a thousand definitions,” true, but the inner emotional and even physical feeling when you are filled with love, love for and from God/goodness, love for/from another person, that’s worth a thousand stories.

I have listened to Dvorak’s 9th “From the New World” Symphony, letting the Second Movement soothe me, and I have been particularly interactive with others in a positive way — cooking lunch for the woman who hadn’t eaten in 24 hours after falling while visiting a cemetary, and making sure her Bible was in reach. This is as fraught an election as…

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The US Patent & Trademark Office shows 6,608 results for “Bridges.” Of those, 4,403 are “dead or abandoned.” The remaining 2,265 registered or pending include a huge number in which “Bridges” is only one part of the organizational name (Highstreet Bridges, an IT management company; Bridges Together, educational services; and on and…

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As I was reading what you wrote, a motorcycle roared down my street, its muffler modified to make a huge amount of noise, over which the rider was blasting music. Listening to God? Humans continue to be remarkably expert at finding ways to fill up our lives with “stuff.” Check e-mail, check text messages, look at and respond to a bunch of…

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For those of us who have not gotten to a movie theater, “White Bird” is based on a book by R.J. Palacio, surely available at your public library, as it was at mine. The book tells the story in 204 pages of four-color cartoons with captions, followed by a glossary of terms. Yes, the question of what each of us will do for those around us is…

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The Yellowbox creation is absolutely clever. I only wish that I believe BridgesUS is or could be a famous, or easily identifiable, “brand,” like Coca-Cola. And if all BridgesUS did was enable Leaders to tend to the immediate physical needs of people, BridgesUS would aleady be identifiable — think Red Cross. But when we factor in God, and…

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I’m lost. If those with whom we work don’t know who we really are, that seems to me a built-in lack of trust. It’s beyond sad that we live in a world where technology available through our computers and phones allow and may even encourage harassment, and a world where that technology almost encourages many to have short fuses over…

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In his book “The Divine Conspiracy,” the late Dallas Willard, for many years professor of philosophy at USC, writes, “By relying on his [Jesus’] word and presence we are enabled to reintegrate the little realm that makes up our life into the infinite rule of God. And that is the eternal kind of life. Caught up in his active rule, our deeds…

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I met Jim Milley at a rehab center where we were both broken — his bones, my spirit. When we were both rejuvenated enough to leave, I went to an independent living facility and found its 12 residents in need, spiritually and day-to-day. I have engaged in moral discussions with men who have spent 20 and 30 years in prison, and women who have…

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