Saturday Good Reads: Planned Peasanthood

It’s one of those things about the internet – a tweet on Twitter leads to a link on a web sites leads to a link on a blog that leads to another blog. It was (if I remember my links correctly) how I found Rick Dawson at Planned Peasanthood. Or perhaps it was the other way around.

It doesn’t matter. Good reading is good reading, no matter who finds whom. The name of his blog, he says, has its origin in a running joke between him and his wife. And in spite of the joke, or perhaps because of it and what lies behind it, he’s a generous, caring, encouraging man.

Over the course of his lifetime, Rick has been a clerk, a DJ, a radar operator, a dishwasher, and a musician. He’s been a software installer, a factory worker, a web site developer, an emergency responder, and an airline customer service agent. He’s always been a musician, playing the guitar since he was 13. And he’s a cancer survivor, and you can read his story at Caring Bridge from 2012.

But of all the things he’s been, the most important one is his faith. His home church is the American Reformed Church in Luverne, Minn.

Rick’s posted a series with a fellow blogger this week on the discipline of silence (and it’s not only for monks). Silence is a larger topic than you might think (or than I thought), and I’ve found the series moving and inspirational.

So please visit Planned Peasanthood, and meet Rick yourself. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Painting: The Gleaners, oil on canvas by Jean-Francois Millet (1857). Musee d’Orsay, Paris.