If you grew up in church, and the high majority of my friends and colleagues did, chances are you grew up in some type of denominational bubble. I have no qualms at all with denominational bubbles. In many ways, they can be good things. They help us hold onto meaningful traditions, provide a place where … Continue reading The Bubbles We Build
Remember the playground days when a bully picked on you, or you overheard some questionable gossip about a classmate, or you watched someone cheat off another student's exam? You wanted to run and tell the teacher, but something may have held you back. After all, nobody wants to be the "tattle-tale." Fast-forward a few decades … Continue reading The Dreaded Tattle-Tale
Most of us carry some kind of memory of school. What comes to you quickly might be something from first grade, or those odd middle school days, or the coming-of-age years of high school or, for some of you, the continuing education days of college. Maybe your memory is a particular classmate who gave you … Continue reading Rectangle Pizza
I've heard my mom tell this about me, and I recall just enough about it to know it's true. As a child I had this thing about bad weather. Not so much literal rain or a thunderstorm actually happening around us, but bad weather being broadcasted on the local news channel. For me, I can … Continue reading More Than the Forecast
I can still picture the commercial. Every December it would come on television, the Time-Life Treasury of Christmas, a two-CD set promising the best of the best of the season's favorites. This was long before anything could be streamed or downloaded; if you wanted the music, you waited for the mail truck. I wanted that … Continue reading Already, Not Yet
Many of you know I was adopted at birth into a wonderful family. Dad (Robert) and Mom (Jane) didn't hesitate in bringing into their lives my two older sisters (Ladona and Melinda) and myself, all three of us from different families. We always knew we had been adopted. It was never strange or awkward, it … Continue reading Brothers, Roads and Grace
Hey, please know that I’m “preaching to the choir,” as the saying goes. We live in a society that loves to share: photos of our food, our pets, our clothes, our children, and just about everything in between. It’s almost instinctive now to snap a quick picture and post it online for others to see. … Continue reading The Visibility Tension
I like to think I’m pretty good at giving things a proper place. Ask my wife, if we bring something home, I vote it should have a home. That way, nothing gets lost, and everything stays in its place. Still, I’ve had moments of forgetfulness, like those times when I couldn’t remember where I parked … Continue reading Empowered for Mission
Ever been somewhere where people are speaking a different language than what you generally speak? Or maybe it’s another country where the accent sounds entirely different than your own, even when speaking English (England, Scotland, Ireland, etc). Or perhaps it’s not another language at all, but slang. A younger generation says something in English, yet … Continue reading The Spirit Still Speaks
Though I wasn’t the greatest academic student of it, I've always really loved science. I was awful at remembering the periodic table or doing well on written exams in school, but I loved learning about the world around me (still do). Much of that love had to do with observation. One of the things that … Continue reading The Gift of Presence
