The holidays bring people together.  Parties, various celebrations, innumerable gatherings of various kinds all present us with opportunities to warmly engage people we rarely see throughout much of the year.  Indeed, it is a natural time of joining and rejoining. Yet, in all of the merriment and festivities, old issues are given renewed space … [Read more...]

With days shortened and the breathtaking migrations now concluded, the last leaves of autumn would spin in some nimble dance set to the music of the seasons, bow in the exit of a season well lived, and then graciously turn the stage of the world over to a winter’s rest.  With fall having spun off the stage until the next year’s curtain call, the … [Read more...]

Speaking to Our Deepest Humanity Christmas and New Years are both rich with meaning and filled with ornate tradition.  Christmas beautifully embodies and subsequently displays a desperately needed hope that something bigger is with us, that ‘God is with us’ despite how terribly difficult our journey might be, how terrifyingly lonely we so … [Read more...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

We’re not all too bad at bobbing and weaving.  We’re pretty good at side-stepping and side-lining issues.  We’re quite adept at cutting and spinning, doing a bit of fanciful dodging, as well as deftly running the obstacle course without getting so much as a scratch on us.  We’ve learned to see things coming from a long ways away, and we’ve figured … [Read more...]