Philip Chard

1 week ago | shepherdexpress.com | Philip Chard

The most vital freedom has nothing to do with civics, politics or law. It’s called “freedom of mind.” It emerges from the power to define oneself, to formulate one’s own identity, rather than having it imposed by others. Many of us don’t believe we possess the agency to determine or own minds, that we are permanently sculpted by genes, developmental experiences, early life trauma, family dynamics and the rest of the cooks in the mental kitchen.

2 weeks ago | shepherdexpress.com | Philip Chard

“I realized it when I laughed,” Karen explained. “A guy at the party told this lame joke. It wasn’t funny, in fact, it was insulting and sexist. But when I heard it, I let out this fake laugh, which just stopped me in my tracks, hearing that phony giggle coming out of my mouth.” “And what did you realize?” I asked. “That how much of what I do around other people isn’t honest, how I go along to get along,” she replied. “There’s a lot of that going around,” I reassured her.

3 weeks ago | shepherdexpress.com | Philip Chard

“I hate this weather,” Ken shouted over the howling wind, straining to free his windshield of ice. Colleagues, we were in a parking lot struggling to make our vehicles safe to drive. I paused from my own scraping to gaze skyward into the vortex of swirling snow, feeling its wind-driven sting on my face. It was a cold, blustery, wild evening that provided an impressive display of nature’s capacity for atmospheric mayhem. “Don’t you wish you lived somewhere warm?” he hollered. “No,” I bellowed.

4 weeks ago | shepherdexpress.com | Philip Chard

I had just settled into my hotel room when the phone jingled. It was the evening before I was to speak at a national conference and the organizer was calling. “Would you like to go to dinner with Scott Carpenter?” she asked. “Are you kidding?” I replied. I knew that Scott, one of the original Mercury astronauts, was to keynote at the conference, but I assumed he would merely rush in, give his remarks and depart. I never imagined I would break bread with him.

1 month ago | shepherdexpress.com | Philip Chard

As an old Eagles song reminds us, some people will “try any ill to find the cure.” Cindy was a painful case in point. “I’ve been divorced twice and went through a half dozen other romances that ended in disaster,” she lamented. “Like recurring dreams, repetitive behaviors are usually telling us something,” I suggested. “What’s the message you see here?” “Apparently, I keep choosing the same kind of man, the wrong kind,” she replied.