By Eddie Pipkin Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours! It is Turkey Day. The Official Start of the Holiday Season. Family Day. Parade and Football Day. The National Day of Gratitude (“a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens,” as originally articulated by Abraham Lincoln. Since this blog [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Here are two different ways to define the word misfit: 1) a person whose behavior or attitude sets them apart from others in an uncomfortably conspicuous way; or 2) a deviation or departure from what is normal or expected. Thus, this term, misfit, might be an excellent choice to describe the person [...]
by Eddie Pipkin I was on a shopping excursion recently and found myself inadvertently trapped in the Ninth Circle of the-Place-That-Is-Not-Heaven. I needed a bag of filter material for my pool pump, and the only ones on the shelf were bizarrely in unmarked, unboxed plain brown paper bags. This utterly stumped the sales associates (all [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Last week I wrote about putting people where they will thrive in ministry. This week I’m writing about putting the ministries where the people are! Our traditional model is to provide ministry at our home location and invite people to join us there, and this can be an excellent framework for establishing [...]
By Eddie Pipkin I’m not much of a gardener. I love growing things—love my yard—love green things in general. But I’m not disciplined enough to grow a formal garden. Our yard has a lightly loved, slightly overgrown-around-the-edges vibe (which is why we don’t live in a neighborhood with a homeowner’s association). Such spasmodic attentiveness can [...]
By Eddie Pipkin One of the researchers I linked you to last week touched on the topic of hedonic adaptation (also known as the hedonic treadmill), a concept that's been around in psychology for a long time--our tendency to grow accustomed to our circumstances over time and revert to an average (for us) emotional state. [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Finding yourself stuck on how to solve a thorny problem? Dipping into the well for your next imaginative endeavor and finding it bone dry? Checking the old brainbox for a new idea and finding the pantry empty? Well, science to the rescue, because there’s bona-fide new evidence out there that your best [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Well, Ian came and went, and while we have a profound sadness for our Florida brothers and sisters who took a direct hit on the southwest coast, here in Orlando the damage was relatively minor, with the exception of some truly biblical localized flooding. Even as the winds dropped into the less [...]
By Eddie Pipkin As I sit here in my Central Florida home, gazing out the window at my yard full of gorgeous live oaks, awaiting the imminent arrival of hurricane Ian, there’s nothing to do now but wait and try not to spiral into negative thinking about things we might have done differently in prepping [...]
By Eddie Pipkin I have some friends who get together to do an annual excursion to haunted-house-themed attractions. If you live in Central Florida, this is a big deal. People travel from across the country to visit Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights, Disney World’s Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, and Busch Gardens’ Howl-O-Scream. Each has a [...]
