Religion and Life
Yogi Berra was describing his own version of Einstein’s Relativity theory when he remarked, “The future ain’t what it used to be.” I thought of the future that used to be as I sat in a deep leather recliner at Eggbert’s cafe, waiting for a table on a Saturday morning, a pager in hand while […]
He can tell a story better than Mark Twain on a riverboat drinking whiskey in the moonlight, although the surreal and the absurd are difficult to distinguish from reality. I hang near him at family gatherings, because I’m a writer and he gives me stuff you can’t make up. And like Seinfeld’s blonde girlfriend who […]
Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder.” Wonder is one of the reasons I stare at constellations, marvel at newborn babes, and hike with my son. We have hiked many miles over the years. Waterfall near Ithaca, NY The best part of hiking has always been wondering what’s […]
While playing golf yesterday, someone asked if I was playing my little homemade golf course. I said, “No, I just take care of it, mow it, water it, kind of like a garden, a hobby. Just like my wife Karen, who works in her garden beside the 8th tee box. We work together at different […]
When Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go’s sings “Heaven is a place on earth” I stop whatever I’m doing and sing along. ‘Ooh baby do you know what that’s worth, you make heaven a place on earth’ It happened today, in my truck while driving to Tulsa and a blue-haired lady with a handicap sign hanging […]
I’m a lousy Dad. At least it feels that way sometimes, the feeling you get that you didn’t say enough or share enough or that you put on a mask and didn’t reveal your inner self to your children, that they never really “found you out.” And maybe that’s best, because as my wife often […]
I stood in the tiny foyer of the holy of holies two days ago, the old knotty pine auditorium of the Tabernacle church of Christ, remembering my wedding day, June 15, 1985, and Thom Mason is fidgeting and pacing, preparing to walk down the aisle and give away his daughter Karen to the likes of […]
Thursday was wild card day so we chose a city of interest between Friday’s Berlin walk-about and Rothenburg. Martin Luther is a famous catalyst for the Protestant reformation and in the year 1517 he posted 95 reasons why indulgences, buying and selling absolution for sins, was contrary to the standard of sola scriptura, or by […]
After breakfast we opened the French doors as a breeze gently entered our room off sun-drenched Lake Alster. Just as a breeze blew in on Pentecost in the book of Acts. Just as that same breeze ripples through the lives of my family in a non-coercive way. Gently, hopefully, faithfully, lovely. I listened to my […]
The bus crossed the 7th street bridge and I peered over the rail through an open window at the eddies of a muddy river, swirling coffee relentlessly shaping the bank of naked earth. On my first day of junior high ringing bells punctuated my hourly class schedule. This change in my academic life assaulted my […]
Bespoke 