The word flashpoint is “a place, event, or time at which trouble, such as violence or anger, flares up.” This past week was a flashpoint – a group of right-winged rioters tried to overtake our Capitol and theoretically overthrow an election. This group was encouraged by party officials, including a sitting President. We haven’t given […]
It’s family, food, fellowship and fun, Tinsel, bright lights, people on the run. Travel to see grandparents, bringing suitcases, Sleeping in strange houses, beds, and weird places. It’s shepherds in bathrobes and children as sheep, Waiting through church without saying a peep. Deciding if the presents will be opened this Eve, Or if Christmas morning […]
I had a dream. Almost exactly ten years ago. Followed by another dream and another. That we would get a young orphan man, who also had a dream, through medical school so he could be a doctor. Then to send some money to Haiti to help kids go to school, feed some elderly people and […]
I have been thinking about the word community. We all live within different communities, and not just talking about where we physically live. That’s one community, but we have the community of our family, our work community, church community, social media community, and you can think of others. Starting as a Chaplain, the medical community […]
I have an older brother by thirteen months, so we are really close to being “Irish Twins.” As a parent and now grandparent, I can’t imagine having two boys this close in age and I am sure we were a handful. One day mom went to the basement to do laundry and my brother and […]
I like fires. Not the raging forest fires like we’re seeing in Colorado, California and other places. Not the structure fires that cause so much destruction and heartache, just the plain ‘ole fireplace-type fires. At one of the homes we lived, we had a chiminea. They are pot-bellied ovens, that have a bulbous bowl with […]
I’ve been working on a book about the Holy Spirit, because I think the Holy Spirit is the least understood aspect of God. In the Trinity, we’re pretty familiar with God as God or the Father, we’re pretty familiar with Jesus, God as the Son. But the Holy Spirit? Simon Ponsonby, author of And the […]
Friends have been asking how my new gig as a Chaplain Intern is going. I’m not sure there are enough adjectives – hard, interesting, holy, emotional, affirming – just to begin. My colleagues have also been very generous with their time, perspective, insight, and their care for me. It was probably better for me to […]
In elementary school, one of the classroom chores was cleaning the chalkboard erasers. More appropriately, beating the chalk out of the erasers. Usually at the last recess of the day, one or two people were assigned to take the erasers outside and beat them together to remove the chalk dust. We had two types of […]
One of the first chapter books I remember reading as a kid was The Boy Hikers. It was a book given to my dad by my grandmother and was a book that he read several times as a boy. For some reason, I was thinking about the book, dad knew where it was, and I […]