More and Less

More and Less

It was an overflow dining room with high ceilings, concrete floors, large windows and the brightest of acoustics. Designed for senior citizens, many of them in wheelchairs, the space suited perfectly. But our school had obtained permission to use it as a lunchroom for...
The Safety Net

The Safety Net

A 19th Century hymn contains these lyrics: “O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to the Lord in prayer.” (What a Friend We Have in Jesus, Jospeh Scriven, 1819-1886). Hmm. I guess not a whole...
That choice before us

That choice before us

Our world is one where the word ‘dystopia’ (an imaginary society with great suffering and injustice and hopelessness under a totalitarian regime marked by harshness) and its corresponding adjective, ‘dystopian’ are in vogue. It’s very chic to use either of them in...
Metaphor Mysteries

Metaphor Mysteries

City dwellers seeking a temporary escape from their normal day to day have caused a sharp rise in farm vacations, or the fancy term, agritourism. A major discovery for those who choose this style of time away from their concrete jungle is how much farmers love what...
Hiking boots recommended

Hiking boots recommended

A college student with the goal of becoming a neurosurgeon enters her studies knowing that much study and reading and personal sacrifice are ahead. She signs up for classes, thereby consenting to the sleepless nights, the long years of internship, the financial...
Off the Charts!

Off the Charts!

You just can’t make this stuff up. It’s right there for all to read, this story of the Israelites, soon after their Moses-led liberation from 400 years of Egyptian slavery. God provided them with manna to eat but they quickly began to yearn for what they had left...
You wanna come along?

You wanna come along?

Think back to when you were a child, and your family made the trip to your grandparents’ house for Christmas. Or maybe a time when you went to a school reunion. Or maybe an annual event or conference that you were looking forward to. The trip itself wasn’t the main...
Après-storm

Après-storm

Pilate despairingly posed the moot question to Jesus: ‘What is Truth?’ Some in our day would query similarly: ‘What is Peace?’ Oh sure, we are familiar with definitions written in dictionaries and the like, but for the ‘boots on the ground’ reality, how is it lived...
Watch your speed!

Watch your speed!

Momentum: bare toes encountering table legs discover its existence. So do shoppers who attempt to pass through closed, all-glass doorways. So do vehicles failing to cede right-of-way to a tree. We live with this thing called momentum every day of our lives, more often...
Finding our beginning

Finding our beginning

Anticipated attendance: 50,000. Actual attendance: 460,000. Woodstock, August 1969. The major theme of this 4-day event was peace, and fittingly, even with the overwhelming numbers, even with epic traffic jams, even with scorching temperatures, high humidity, and...