Help for nightmare sufferers?

Dreams hold much mystery as to the whys and wherefores. And yet many people suffer from frequent nightmares. The brain keeps processing our anxiety, discouragement, stress and it shows up in strange and repetitive nightmares. The more emotional or physical pain, the more likely you’ll have a nightmare.
But here’s something interesting. A study was done [...]

Check out this Biblical event!

Want to meet a number of key missional leaders all in one place for a reasonable price? Wondered what missional was all about? Come to Biblical Seminary on October 10th (THIS FRIDAY) to hear Scot McKnight(Jesuscreed.org), Tim Keel, Darrell Guder, and the ever stimulating, even controversial Brian McLaren (along with some local greats as well) [...]

Magical places

While in Chicago last Saturday I skipped out on the morning conference session to drive Wheaton College. It was nice to see old stomping grounds (where I did my doctorate). But the highlight was taking a friend to the Wade Center which houses the papers of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, George McDonald (and 3 other [...]

Read the fine print!

I’ve been needing a new PDA or electronic scheduler as I need to be able to return client calls and schedule appts away from my laptop. A friend told me about the TMobile Dash that has a full keypad (for people with fingers the size of toothpicks). Since I have TMobile I thought the cost [...]

More comments from the SCP conference

Some tantalizing quotes from our recent conference unapologetically taken out of context for your tasting pleasure:
Bill Hathaway: “Psychology is a social construction that gives us pockets of truth about the real world.”
From a presentation on the history of the psychology of religion project begun in the 19th century. He was talking about this historical project [...]

Bobblehead Christianity

At the Society for Christian Psychology, JKA Smith (a Calvin Coll. philosopher) made an offhanded comment about bobblehead Christianity–the kind where the head is huge but the body is nearly non-existent. This image has really stuck with me.
We fill the head with truth and facts about our faith and we expect that to transform us [...]

Overheard at the Society for Christian Psychology

In Chicago for the annual conference for the Society for Christian Psychology. My head is full. Good conversations with colleagues from different parts of the country. This is a unique opportunity to have philosophers, theologians, and counselors talking together about Scripture and counseling.
I’ll blog more about this but Kevin Vanhoozer, a theologian from TEDS, gave [...]

Faking politeness

We all do it now and again. We say, “that’s okay” when we are burning up inside. We leave a voice mail and say we were sorry to miss them but we really weren’t all that sorry and we are glad they didn’t pick up when we called them back. Sometimes we fake politeness because we [...]

Mind pollution

Some years ago a bible study leader (and grad school professor) made this response to a comment I made suggesting he should read some new book: “Phil, I’m sure its an interesting book but I have limited time for reading and I so I’ve already picked what I can read for this year.” I was [...]

“I apologize for being late…”: bad behaviors by your counselor

Just skimmed, “‘I apologize for being late’: The courteous psychotherapist” (in the 2008 (v. 45:2)Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, pp 273-277) by Rolfs Pinkerton. Pinkerton details how our bad behaviors can harm (gasp!) the therapeutic alliance but that courteousness and correcting the behavior can help alleviate the problem. No surprise here.
But wait, what are some of [...]