Thanks for visiting my new steemit page. Before I start putting out content, I’d like to spend my first post introducing myself and the blog. Currently I teach social justice to high school students; I have been teaching (and coaching/moderating – soccer, gay-straight alliance, diversity club, outdoors club, reading discussion group, fair trade club, etc.) for the past 17 years. I am fortunate to love and be loved by a wife, three kids, an extended family, and many great friends. With the support of so many wonderful people, I was able to self-publish a book on inter-religious spirituality and justice called "I am not God: Searching for a Path toward Personal and Global Well-Being" in June of 2017.

Over the upcoming months, I intend to post the book as well as other original reflections on this page. My book was an effort to encourage thought and conversation on how to deal with our personal and communal problems by sharing insights from various wisdom traditions (both theistic and nontheistic) and contributing my own thoughts. I spend a great deal of time reading and thinking about two questions:

• (1) How do I (and others) find personal peace and contentment in spite of the suffering, insecurity, uncertainty, disappointment, and anxiety that are part of life?
• (2) How do we improve a world filled with oppression, exploitation, poverty, hopelessness, violence, hate, prejudice, ignorance, environmental degradation, and injustice?

Put in a simpler way, how do individuals find personal well-being, and how do we help the world to become a better place? In the book, I explore common threads shared in various wisdom traditions, many of which point to our tendency to operate as though we are the center of the universe as a significant source of our personal and social problems, but I do not claim to have simple or final answers to these questions. Regardless, I believe they are critical questions that we need to think about if we hope to do better.

Additional topics and themes that I plan to reflect on include: contemporary & historical social justice issues, personal wellness, the search for wisdom, special interests in politics/education, science, the confirmation bias, the de-regulation movement, and prejudice. Questions I might grapple with, include, “Does religion teach people to seek righteousness or reassure them that they are right?” and “Are rights often invoked in a one-dimensional way that ignores how promoting one group’s rights & interests might involve undermining another group’s rights & freedom?” Most importantly, I hope to engage the thoughts and interests of those who read these writings. So, if you have any topics or questions you would like to propose I would be happy to hear and address your thoughts on them.

Before I begin to post the book, I’ll include a few general reflections to let you get a better sense of whether you’d like to engage my writing further.

peace,
Dave