Be Kind
It is time to come clean about some of the important relationships in my life. In particular, my relationships with Siri and Alexa have been deteriorating rapidly. The quality of our communication is getting worse rather than better, and in my view it is because they both believe they are capable of thinking my thoughts […]
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What’s Next
What’s next? That’s a question I get a lot these days as I approach my pending retirement from Christ United in June of this year. Everyone seems to understand me well enough to know that I’m not just going to be sitting around doing nothing. Today is my first public report about pending possibilities. It […]
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A Perfectly Romantic Moment
He expected a Hotel. He settled for a barn. He had dreamed of the perfect son. He settled for an illegitimate son. He had expected an illegitimate son. He got the Son of God. That pretty much sums up the story of Joseph as found in the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke. During […]
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People, Look East
Sunrises and sunsets in north Texas recently have been nothing short of spectacular. Many people assume that the prettiest sunsets are in the summer, but as a compulsive observer of the horizon, I can assure you that they arrive in the darkest parts of winter. Even if you are not a nature lover, you no […]
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A Simple Thanksgiving
(In his sermon at Christ United this past week, the Rev. Chris Dowd referenced the Thanksgiving proclamation delivered by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It prompted me to reprint my Thanksgiving column from 2016, which I think you will find to still be relevant.) Though there were precedents dating all the way back to George Washington, […]
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I Believe
The number of things I know about God is shrinking. Having reached the beginning of my 80th decade, I’m a bit underwhelmed by the current state of my theological knowledge. When I was young, I knew quite a bit about God. Today, I am pretty much limited to two affirmations: God is Mystery and God […]
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Thankful
My father-in-law quit smoking his unfiltered cigarettes when he was in his mid-eighties. I always thought that to be an act of willpower almost as magnificent as the extraordinary man who made the decision. What I remember most about Bill and smoking is the way he would instinctively hold his cigarette backwards, between his thumb […]
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Rhythm
My body thinks it is sleeping an extra hour every night. I go to bed at the same time, and I rise at my usual 5:30 a.m. But since we transitioned from Daylight Savings Time, I am clearly more alert and energetic when I get up in the morning. Given the fact that I much prefer […]
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Miracles
George Orwell once suggested that if one wants to write great prose, the first sentence needs to be compelling. Neil deGrasse Tyson certainly met that standard with a stunning opening sentence in his book ASTROPHYSICS FOR PEOPLE IN A HURRY: “In the beginning, nearly fourteen billion years ago, all the space and all the matter […]
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The Peshmerga
(In August of 2014 I wrote a column about the legendary Peshmerga and the meaning of their name. Recent events in northern Iraq, and conversations with church neighbors who are Kurdish, have prompted me to reprint and update that column with the thoughts below.) The Peshmerga have been in the news lately, and I became […]
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