As the snow began to quietly début winter’s arrival, I made my yearly descent to the basement.  Rummaging through the backwaters of the musty root cellar, I spied the dusty stack of aged boxes with the word “Christmas” hastily scrawled across their cardboard sides.  Inside of them lay the wonder of Christmas embodied in carefully crafted … [Read more...]

We humanize God.  It’s in our nature to create and craft a god who is more of us and less of anything divine.  We have this terribly odd proclivity to need a god, but to concurrently need that god to be something that we can control.  We want a deity that has enough supernatural qualities to rush into our lives in times of crisis, or handily answer … [Read more...]

Thanksgiving.  To the destruction and detriment of those who live there, it will perish in an environment within which a sense of entitlement and greed rules the day.  Conversely, on the opposite end of that spectrum, a sense of thanksgiving will thrive and it will breathe life into any place where a heart of appreciation and gratitude refuses to … [Read more...]

Snow had graced her simple headstone with white, embellishing a life of poverty with a garnish of royalty.  In similar fashion, winter’s kiss had regally adorned the muscular branches of the red oak that stood as a broad and gentle sentry above her grave.  She had always wanted to be buried under an oak tree for the simple reason that poverty, … [Read more...]

As a kid, I remember the geese.  Living along the Atlantic flyway, we had front row seats to nature on a grand quest.  Nature’s dazzling palette had liberally painted the forests in burning reds, sizzling oranges and electric yellows as if nature had unleashed the whole of its artistic abilities in some massive brushstroke.  Cascading off every … [Read more...]

I started delivering newspapers when I was a tender nine years of age.  Had I been an adult looking at the nine year old that I was at the time, I probably wouldn’t have let myself take on the job at that age.  In fact, I might have thought such as idea as skirting the periphery of the insane.  But with my parent’s blessing, I started delivering … [Read more...]

Thanksgiving is an incredibly rich time.  It affords us the opportunity to reflect on the transformational power that an attitude of thanksgiving delivers into our lives.  It likewise prompts us to move away from all lesser tendencies that tend to woo us and instead embrace this vitally important attitude. As a ‘thank you’ to my readers, I’ve … [Read more...]

Being thankful is a nice idea and something that we’re supposed to do.  There’s something right and proper and good about it.  But sometimes in the rush of life we don’t feel we have time to be thankful, or that our situation isn’t really something to be thankful about.  Life sometimes is more about survival and less about anything else.  So there … [Read more...]

Do I really want to see myself?  Really?  Not as I might prefer to see myself in order to have some rickety and ill-placed semblance of peace.  Not the image that grants me permission to stay a course that maybe I should stay away from.  Not the perception of myself that allows me to side-step guilt, by-pass accountability, and circumvent … [Read more...]