New life is always a celebration! When a new baby arrives in your circle of influence welcome that little one with open arms. Don’t respond with disapproval if the circumstances around the birth have not been what you consider ideal. You have an opportunity to begin speaking into the heritage that little child will have. Your influence now can...

Story told by Jeff Yellow Owl, written by Patty Duncan In 1923 the government took my grandmother from her parents and put her in a boarding school to immerse her in the white man’s culture. She remembers bumping along in a wagon, watching her home and family disappear in the rolling hills of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in...

One of humanity's quirks is that people actually like to be scared. At least, pretend scared. Kids (and often adults) dress up as ghouls, ghosts, pirates, and their favorite costumed superheros and villains and run around from house to house shouting "Trick of Treat!" and demanding candy. I've always thought Halloween is one of the weirdest holidays:...

When you think of Easter do you think of bunnies and eggs? Chicks and baskets? Possibly a cross or a church or spring dresses?  I think of hundred year old houses.  It’s a little random, I know, but at the heart of it, Easter is all about restoration. You don’t have to look far to see what’s wrong with the world.  The places where we’re...

Human behavior suggests that people are “hard-wired" to retaliate when they have been hurt by another person.  Our pride or self-esteem is injured. Our expectations or dreams are disappointed.  We lose something very valuable to us.  We want recompense for the damages. But there are other resistances which block our motivation to forgive. ...