#decisions

Toward Wholeness Blog

Richard Dahlstrom

Apr 11, 2019
4 min

“We will not be silent”… will we?

Taproot Theatre in Seattle is presently running a play about one of my faith heroes, Sophie Scholl. Along with her brother Hans, these two were German students, members of the “White Rose”, whose mission was to incite German people to resist the reign of Hitler. The play is well-written and well-delivered, consisting primarily of dialogue between Sophie and her interrogator. If you’re in the Seattle area, I hope you don’t miss it (running through the end of April), not onl

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Dear Green Lake: Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year

Richard Dahlstrom

Dec 29, 2018
2 min

Dear Green Lake: Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year

Dear Green Lake Before my five year departure from Washington, I walked the frozen shores with the woman who is now my wife and after that walk, made a decision to propose. When we left Seattle in 1979, we grieved. Little did we know that, 16 years later, we’d return with our young family as I followed my calling to Bethany Community Church, just a few hundred yards from the lake! My love affair with you reignited instantly and in these subsequent 25 years, I’ve run at leas

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Seasons of Life and Lessons in Staying and Letting Go

Richard Dahlstrom

Dec 15, 2018
4 min

Seasons of Life and Lessons in Staying and Letting Go

left to right: Martin, Director of Tauernhof, Richard, Charlie, board member of Tauernhof. “Stay a little longer” my friend Martin invited from Austria over FaceTime last August as I was planning my teaching trip for December. “We’re dedicating the new building the weekend after you finish teaching. So you should stay for that.” And so it was this past Sunday, (12.9.18) sitting in a marvelous new building, I was eking out enough understanding of German to not only celebrate

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How Naming Your Values can Change Your Life

Richard Dahlstrom

Dec 7, 2018
3 min

How Naming Your Values can Change Your Life

The sad reality, though, is that the testimonies offered that day also served as a grave reminder that courage, servanthood, generosity, and civility, are in short supply these days. It is this way because the avalanche of cultural input conspires to enflame individualism, consumerism, pettiness, a sense of personal inadequacy, and victim mentalities. All of these shrink our world down to survival mode, which is far cry from the abundant life Christ came to give, and the “r

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The thing that mustn’t change: Use Your Gifts!

Richard Dahlstrom

Oct 6, 2018
4 min

The thing that mustn’t change: Use Your Gifts!

My predecessor just keep using his gifts day after day for 38 years. The difficult truth that few seem interested in hearing these days is that the stuff we receive in our social media feeds is overwhelmingly not convincing anyone to change their minds about anything. Minds were mostly made up, one way or the other, about the supreme court nominee, long before the hearing on Thursday, and as a result, everything that has happened since only served to confirm predisposed bias

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“…the time we’ve been given” – The Why and How of a Personal Mission Statement

Richard Dahlstrom

Sep 29, 2018
4 min

“…the time we’ve been given” – The Why and How of a Personal Mission Statement

1. Coffee. Always first: Coffee 2. Bible reading while drinking the first cup. 3. Meditation (from the Bible reading) 4. Writing in the journal with the second cup. 5. Check my to do list. The to-do list is a document somewhere in the cloud, and every time I open it, this shows up: MISSION STATEMENT: RD uses his gifts of teaching, catalytic vision, and leadership to serve and bless people by inviting them to wholeness, and demonstrating through both teaching and living, h

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The Collapse of Everything, and Why it’s a Source of Hope

Richard Dahlstrom

May 22, 2018
3 min

The Collapse of Everything, and Why it’s a Source of Hope

Plunge your pole, hard, into the place you anticipate placing your foot. Look carefully. Step quickly. Go! They’ve collapsed under my weight more than once during spring hiking, but thankfully I’ve never been seriously injured by it. Not everyone is so lucky. There are lots of ways to mitigate this risk, but I’m using snow bridges as a metaphor today to remind you that every bridge in your life will collapse someday. If a bridge is what we depend on in our lives for sec

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Awakening the Feminine Voice in the Church – What it means and Why it Matters

Richard Dahlstrom

Apr 7, 2018
4 min

Awakening the Feminine Voice in the Church – What it means and Why it Matters

The equivalent of 5 jumbo jets worth of women die in labor each day… life time risk of maternal death is 1,000x higher in a poor country than in the west. That should be an international scandal. In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world – all quotes by Nicholas D.

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The Disco Ball of Success, and What to do when You’re Blinded by it

Richard Dahlstrom

Dec 2, 2017
12 min

The Disco Ball of Success, and What to do when You’re Blinded by it

Here’s a free chapter for all those folks you know in your lives who have walked the road of success for a bit of distance and are both gratified and weary, cherishing what’s happened so far, but unclear as to what should happen next. If you know such people, please share this chapter with them on your social media. For me, sharing this isn’t about promoting my new book of which this is a part – it’s about helping people navigate the waters of career, creativity, family, an

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Let the Journey Begin – An invitation to travel to the Alps with me

Richard Dahlstrom

Nov 4, 2017
2 min

Let the Journey Begin – An invitation to travel to the Alps with me

“Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all” is how Helen Keller put it. She’s was onto something, surely. When Dave Matthews mused about the “Ants Marching” in his masterful music some years ago, it seemed to me he was pondering a sort of inevitable decay into a ritual of breakfast, commute, work, commute, supper, exhaustion, repeat. There are surely forces at work in the systems that are western civilization contributing to this dismal picture. However, I

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Soil Conditions for seeds of hope – Lessons learned on a bike ride

Richard Dahlstrom

Oct 7, 2017
3 min

Soil Conditions for seeds of hope – Lessons learned on a bike ride

It’s no news that we live in a world of increasing insanity, where daily headlines serve to remind us that humanity is collectively, like Sarumon in Lord of the Rings “replacing reason with madness” by choosing arrogance over humility, violence over reconciliation, individualism over community, and fear over hope. The upcoming series I’m preaching at the church I lead is predicated on the very good news that nobody need be swept away in this avalanche of darkness, that there’

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Richard Dahlstrom

Sep 28, 2017
2 min

Are you running to Win?

You are God’s uniquely handcrafted beautiful creation. You have gifts to bring to our darkening and weary world, and that means you weren’t just put here to survive, or have a few grand adventures of your own. You were put here to bless; to pour your life out onto the canvass of this world in the colors of hope, in an artistry that’s yours alone. So get on with it. Run to win. Get over the mentalities of scarcity which define survival and a hefty stash of cash as the win be

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Fear of Falling vs Freedom to Fail: Choose Wisely

Richard Dahlstrom

Apr 7, 2017
5 min

Fear of Falling vs Freedom to Fail: Choose Wisely

fear of falling is more dangerous than falling I hope you’ve seen the ascendancy of young lives as they move from infant to toddler? If so then you know they’re bold; unafraid of falling. In fact, they’re confident they will fall. They fall, assess, maybe cry a bit, and then get up again. This confidence continues on, if they’re fortunate, into childhood too. I was recently riding the ski lift when I saw a boy take a mighty fall as he was speeding down. Both his skis fe

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Richard Dahlstrom

Mar 23, 2017
4 min

New Axioms in a Post Truth World

Do you remember eighth grade geometry, and the subject of axioms? An axiom is “a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true”. An example in math would be: “if x and y are real numbers, then the sum of x+y is also a real number”. There’s no need to prove it because it’s self evident. Axioms are important because mathematicians and philosophers build structures on their foundations. Get the axiom wrong and the whole str

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Immigration is about Kingdom Ethics, not Party Preference

Richard Dahlstrom

Feb 9, 2017
4 min

Immigration is about Kingdom Ethics, not Party Preference

A letter in the Washington Post This week World Relief bought space in the Washington Post in order to invite President Trump to reconsider his executive order banning refugees from several countries. They also invited pastors of many congregations larger than 2000 to sign their letter. The church I lead partners extensively with World Relief in Rwanda, and one of their refugee resettlement ministries is located in Seattle, so when I learned of this opportunity, it didn’t r

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The Gifts of Christmas #5 – Shepherd, Provider, Gift Giver

Richard Dahlstrom

Dec 24, 2016
4 min

The Gifts of Christmas #5 – Shepherd, Provider, Gift Giver

Over 37 years, two stockings have become ten. JOY! It was in the late summer of 1976 when I first made my way north to Seattle, Washington. I was headed to a new college, having changed my major from architecture to music. I drove up from California and every mile north of Sacramento was new territory for me. I’ll never forget seeing downtown for the first time and being overwhelmed by it’s beauty. It’s proximity to the the water, it’s view of the mountains, the relativel

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Marriage: 37 Lessons from 37 Years of Experience

Richard Dahlstrom

Sep 9, 2016
6 min

Marriage: 37 Lessons from 37 Years of Experience

still smiling after 37 years of journeying together Thirty seven years is a long time, and yesterday my wife and I were able to celebrate that time marker as the length of marriage. This is something that brings us both pride and gratitude, but more gratitude than pride. We realize that we’ve been largely healthy, and at least one of has been employed, the whole time. We have much cause for thanks, because of the lives we’ve been given. Still, 37 years is a big deal and

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Richard Dahlstrom

Aug 26, 2016
5 min

Completion as a Starting Point

I started a little vacation about a week ago. The plan was to hike a big chunk of the Pacific Crest Trail with my wife of nearly 37 years. This kind of space would provide the kind of beauty and clarity needed for me to see far into the future (“Do you have a five year plan?” someone asks me) and so be able to prepare for it. After all, we learn from an early age that life’s about setting goals, envision a future, and then going after it with all the gusto we can muster.

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“Adventures in Saying Yes” was the best read of the summer because…

Richard Dahlstrom

Aug 18, 2016
3 min

“Adventures in Saying Yes” was the best read of the summer because…

“Speaking of Jesus”, which is one of my favorite books, precisely because the author has a knack for telling people about Jesus as if it’s actually good news, rather than the distorted version of the gospel that implies God’s mad at the whole world. God’s angry at sin and death, friends, and we’re trapped in a matrix of these very elements… but I digress. The guy from Indonesia then says, “Have you read his newest book?” and when I told him I hadn’t he began to tell me about

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While the world goes mad, Four Things We KNOW

Richard Dahlstrom

Dec 11, 2015
3 min

While the world goes mad, Four Things We KNOW

Mourning at a stadium in San Bernadino Behind the holiday lights, both here in Europe and back home in the USA, the waves of unhappy news just keep coming. Colorado Springs. Beirut. Paris. Mumbai. San Bernadino – death dealing violence has become so common its hardly news anymore. In such times, the events themselves are never the only stressors. There are reactions to the events, or the proposed reactions by politicians and wanna-be presidents that cause reaction too,

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