I’m not such an unaware narcissist that I believe that I’m the only one Roger Hladky blessed in a powerful way. I was one among many. It was long after Roger performed our wedding ceremony, his first to officiate. I was a father, my children grown and flown, an elder at our church back in […]
I grew up in a home that severely limited my creative outlet of language…I wasn’t allowed to curse, nor was I given the freedom to vent with words that hinted of the real four-letter curse words, the baby curse words like heck and shoot and darn. These were deemed unpolished and tainted by the very […]
Tyler Davis on a recent trip to Uganda, praying with his legs. I was brought to faith in a church that valued knowledge and the intellect. Within the confines of my birth family, I watched my parents enflesh this knowledge into action. And certainly it affected me…clean your room, take out the trash, mow the […]
Francis Chan put hands over his face and agonized about whether to speak the unspeakable to a traditionally proud and spiritually cloistered group that appeared from his stage perch decidedly gray, liver-spotted hands enshrouding the candle lit flame that once was a raging bonfire. He was speaking to me and to my elders and leaders […]
I wandered over to the headstone of my Grandpa Jesse Davis after Aunt Becky’s graveside service and while standing to the side of his bones (Grandma Mildred told me to not step on folks in the graveyard…it’s not respectful), I pondered his death. Born in 1901…died 1969. I commented to my contemporary fifty-something cousins, I […]
It was the first time I ever prayed with my face touching the earth…and the first time I have ever had a prayer interrupted by a President of the United States. I lay prostrate on the green grass surrounding the Washington Monument, praying with ten other men in a tight circle, and a half million […]
December 24, 2012 On December 14th, I wept for twenty six souls in Newtown, Connecticut. The despair I felt was a sense that we’ve lost control as a nation, abandoned universal morality for individual amorality. Have faith, hope and love, ancient words from ancient texts, devolved into hollow shells of confectionary meaninglessness? And then I […]
Bespoke 