Being the son of a fulltime Christmas tree grower, I can share that Decembers were what you can imagine. So my mom, ever the planner, asked us pre-teenybopper kids to create for her and my dad a Christmas list of what we wanted. That’s no surprise, right? Pretty status...

Some think Labor Day was not that long ago. You know, summer, shorts and shades. And whoa, wow, here we are. Christmas. Already. For some, it’s way too soon, even though we have noticed merchandizers starting the retail rush around Halloween. Still, Christmas. Again. A woman in our choir was...

  Tell me you weren’t expecting a traditional “We should give thanks to God this Thanksgiving” blog. You should know me better by now. In the sermon series I brought to my church this month, I invited the congregation to consider how (and when) God gives thanks for us. Think...

  One thing is clear since this past Tuesday: this won’t be politics as normal. Some who prayed for God to direct this election may not comfortable with this new news. All of us, no matter our location, should wonder, “Is God changing, or are we?” Some believe God does...

To conclude this three-part series, Jesus makes three things clear: a.) there are laws, b.) there is love, and c.) laws and love are not the same. As the religious elite, the Pharisees embodied the law as The Big Deal. Their priority was to uphold the laws established so long...

  Last week in the first of this three-part blog series, I mentioned my parents’ marriage. Far from perfect yet equally far from disastrous, they were what we all are—and that’s human. Jesus speaks to our human nature in the Holy text I brought to this column last week and...

  The maid of honor at my parents’ June 30, 1962 wedding said the couple wouldn’t make it. Why? The two had had what must have been a doozy of an argument at the wedding rehearsal the night before their Big Day. My parents would be married today if my...

A question often asked when we travel is, “Where are you from?” Here I invite you to rethink your answer. You may want to locate yourself exactly where you are, which is, like Jesus, on the border. The historical Jesus was a Galilean. “Historical Jesus,” for any unfamiliar with the...

An educated, treasured professional I deeply admire for her open eyes and level thinking summed up last week’s Senate event by saying, “The handling of this [meaning the Judge Brett Kavanaugh hearing], and the discourse, has been deeply disconcerting. I fear we, as a nation, have reached a point of...

The ordinary day suddenly wasn’t ordinary. And like any ordinary day that suddenly wasn’t ordinary, this one felt weird, unnerving. I had pulled into a high school parking lot to a find a phone number on my cell phone. I wanted to be off the main road to do this....