PODCAST · religion
Propinquity Press
by William Spangler-Dunning
Propinquity press produces stories of life with the hope that through the simple experience of listening to another person's story, deeper connections and understanding of others might change the world just a little.
Episodes
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Finding the Remote
Human history is full of people going to war with others simply because someone else’s neighborhood looked too different from their own. This lack of experience with remoteness and other unique human perspectives of the world around us is likely the foundation for the ugliest divisions that…
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Making of an Explosion Jr High
As I moved from elementary school into Jr high, the rules and expectations changed and with that I had to continue to change too. I learned so much during those 2 short years both from the things I got right and the things I got really wrong. Washington Junior High School has long since…
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A Soul Worth Saving 2026 Version
It is so easy to grow up in our world and never really understand how different ours is from other peoples experiences. How could we ever know unless we got the chance to experience those other worlds. Eventually, however, most of us end up getting glimpses of other people's understanding of God,...
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Please Pass the Peas
This was my first attempt to tell a story about my mother's life and her effect on mine. It is told in more of documentary style but it is worth a listen. It is one of my older stories first released in the book, "Imperfect Stories: Memories from Holt Street."
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Living Rooms
Before I really knew what my life would become, just as I was finishing up my junior year in college, I traveled to the remote western rainforest of Brazil. I spent 5 weeks with a community of people and in a place, "a living room" as different from the one I was first taught about what was...
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A Lot in Between - A modern parable of transformative wholeness
In a small neighborhood in Ottumwa Iowa, my younger self learned the transformative power that happens when people (his child neighborhood friends) focus on a lot in between. A metaphor based on a real experience that started with the irrational act of mowing an abandon lot, knowing that it would...
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Tears of Laughter (Digitally remastered)
I wrote this story about the life and eventual death of my sister, during one of the most difficult and imbalanced moments of my life. I sat in a church parking lot, having arrived an hour too early for the meeting, and in the midst of my own confusion for the direction of my life, this story...
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Playground Rules
This story is about the rules we learn early in our life through our games on playgrounds that eventually become the divisions in the wider society we live in as adults. Here is an excerpt: Elementary playgrounds are not as innocent as they are often imagined to be. It was there among the...
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Cookie Crumb Friends and Altered Experiences
Sometimes the people we meet early on in our life stay with us as we experience the rest of our life. We were never a large group of church friends and perhaps the fact that our numbers rarely exceeded a dozen, made those days together even more memorable and worthy of a story. With all groups of...
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The Drive
I learned early that moving from one world to the next, from one phase of life to the next part of the life journey was difficult but well worth the effort. I believe I hid this story of how my days in seminary began for two possible reasons. One, I was a little ashamed of being so poor and being...
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The Turkey Island Gang
Our world changed... and perhaps with it, so all of us has too. I hope for a world where the differences we have with one another do not encourage the harm and threat of those we deem to be different. I am just storyteller and simply offer this story of a long time ago that took place on an…
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Superhero
I owe a lot to my grandfather for the person I have become. When I was young, I saw him as nothing short of a superhero with amazing powers to make his and other's lives better. What I did not then, but learned later, is that he really was a hero who saved the lives of millions during World War…
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Secret Messages
Its interesting how our childhood experiences can live underneath our adult lives. Sometimes the effects are positive while other times these memories cause us to fear and mistrust ourselves and others. Even worse, most of the time, human beings are completely unaware of the way these events…
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Cemetery Afternoons
A short story about a father, my father, passing on the wisdom to live life in such a way that we do not let our souls become too old. Stories of death and dying are not easy shared or really common between a father and son but my father was anything common. I am thankful for his words to me or…
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Childhood Redemption
My grandmother was one of my greatest faith mentors partly because she had seen the worst of what church could be and still managed to believe in God. Her life was harsh and difficult for a woman who chose to divorce her abusive husband in the 1940s and though she found very little grace and love...
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The Unimaginable Dream (The College Years)
This episode is a series of 3 stories that take place during my first year at Culver-Stockton College. As human beings, we experience a lot of pressure to remain in the familiar worlds in which we grow up. Sometimes those forces come from within and other times we experience extreme pushback from...
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Hellos and Goodbyes Sample
A short sample of Propinquity Press stories... from Hellos and Goodbyes
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Hellos and Goodbyes
This story is about a the first moment I learned the power of saying hello and goodbye to another person. This universal human experience occurs over and over in our lives between friends, parents/children and potential life mates. Her name was Elizabeth and she was my first real love and the...
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Waiting for the Next Conversation
Through a series of conversations about death and dying my college roommate taught me some of the best lessons of life. His name was Greg and he was just one of those people who seemed to know that his time on this earth was limited and getting the most out of it as quickly as one could was...
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The Farm and Best Kept Secrets
This is a story about my family's secret and its impact upon my life as a storyteller. My grandparents kept secrets on the farm as an act of pure love. One family secret nearly destroyed our family and was the reason I was raised in town (Ottumwa Iowa) rather than on the family farm. Through some...
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A Place Beyond Iowa part 2 - The Power of Receptions
This is the second part of the story in which the author wrestles with the complexity of human life. This story involves the best of human life mixed with the worst that human beings can produce. This all takes place at a wedding reception but its about a whole lot more..
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A Place Beyond Iowa - Part one "The Journey Down"
This episode begins the story of the first time the Dunning family left Iowa and how it expanded the author's understanding of the wider world as well as his beliefs around being a perfect human being. Perfection and being OK in this world are not the same thing.
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Life is not always Elementary
One of the reasons I thought I must be from Mars when I was younger revolved around my struggle with reading. I learned eventually that I had a condition called Dyslexia. This story is about finding a way through this difficulty with the help of many great teachers from Ottumwa Iowa. This is a...
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Life in Between
All human beings eventually learn that life moments are temporary. We learn that things change and even disappear. People move away and in time pass from this earth. We cannot stop time but we can preserve at least some parts through our memories and story like this one. Take a listen and…
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The Tunnel and other OK Places
The Tunnel was/is a deep metaphor for difficult moments and troubling mistakes for my life. Growing up in my home church in Ottumwa Iowa serves as the backdrop of the story but the deeper meaning of those moments have continued to impact my ability to find my way to being OK in a world that…
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Tears of Laughter
This story is a tribute to my sister and comes from my first book "Imperfect Stories" She made me laugh in the midst of a world that can bring so many tears.
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The Other Side of Shadows
The Other Side of Shadows begins with the memory of being part of the "Live Nativity" events in my early childhood and address a key moment when I began to learn how to value both where I had grown up and where I have been able to go in life. No answers are given in this story, just one human's...
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Crabapple Tree Memories
A story about a group of young friends I met when I was seven years old and the way an old building in Ottumwa Iowa (my hometown) along with the people who walked its halls, helped me to know that I had a future story. The most powerful thing we can say to another person is to tell them they have…
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No Apologies Needed
In a world where it is easy to devalue someone or act as if you certain people are more valuable than others, I share a story about my father's (or really every human being's) desire to be valuable enough to his son to give him something of him/herself. My father loved to build boats but…
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The Platform People
When I was growing up in my hometown my parents had a unique way of teaching me about the value of taking the time to the learn how other people see the world. It is so easy to idolize our own understanding of NORMAL as this is often what gives us comfort in an uncertain and changing world....
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Welcome to my World - The house on Holt Street
The opening Story of the Book, "Why Im not from Mars and a few other stories of why I turned out OK" This story is about a young boys journey from believing he is a Martian ambassador to believing he might just be a fairly unique human being after all. It all begins in that first house at 818 E....
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Why Im not from Mars - A soul worth Saving
A story about why my faith journey is a little different from others and as a bonus, why I really hate hot chocolate.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Propinquity press produces stories of life with the hope that through the simple experience of listening to another person's story, deeper connections and understanding of others might change the world just a little.
HOSTED BY
William Spangler-Dunning
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Propinquity Press have?
Propinquity Press currently has 32 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Propinquity Press about?
Propinquity press produces stories of life with the hope that through the simple experience of listening to another person's story, deeper connections and understanding of others might change the world just a little.
How often does Propinquity Press release new episodes?
Propinquity Press has 32 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Propinquity Press?
You can listen to Propinquity Press on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Propinquity Press?
Propinquity Press is created and hosted by William Spangler-Dunning.
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