Slavery as an institution is pretty far removed from the minds of most of us residing here in 21st century America.  Slavery sits back plenty far enough in the faded, yellowed and brittle pages of history to create a more than comfortable chasm between us and itself.  We view that chasm of time and social development and modernism as broad enough … [Read more...]

Wikipedia states that a perfect storm “refers to the simultaneous occurrence of weather events which, taken individually, would be far less powerful than the storm resulting of their chance combination.  Such occurrences are rare by their very nature, so that even a slight change in any one event contributing to the perfect storm would lessen its … [Read more...]

We’ve forgotten who we are. We’ve forgotten who we’ve been called to be.  We’ve forgotten the privilege of having the liberties that were handed down to us by people who sacrificed for those liberties in ways that make our abuse of them shameful and inexcusable.  We’ve abandoned all that is good in a thoughtless trade-off for all that is not.  Oh … [Read more...]

We reap what we sow.  In other words, what we do is never free of an outcome that will be shaped by what we do.  The ‘cause-and-effect’ of life is such that what we do will always cause an outcome that is fashioned directly by what we do.  Despite the fact that we often think (or would prefer to think) that what we do is somehow isolated to the … [Read more...]

We are humans.  All of us.  And while we come from different cultures, and hold different beliefs, and embrace a variety of traditions…we are human.  Our dress may vary, our economics might be quite different, the language that we speak may be entirely unknown to others, and we may well be spread far across the socio-economic spectrum…but we are … [Read more...]

At times, the innumerable dialogues regarding the state of our nation appear to be less dialogues and more something akin to agenda mongering and rights crusading.  It seems that we have hijacked the solemn rights and sacred liberties afforded us and have forced them into servitude around our ego-centric agendas and myopic special interests.  The … [Read more...]

You’ve probably heard it said before; “nothing’s sacred anymore.”  There seems to be a core truth in that statement that continually gathers momentum.  We don’t appear to value a whole lot of things anymore in a sacred kind of way that makes something intensely worthy of our fullest admiration.  Quite the opposite, we seem to have embraced this … [Read more...]

What do we do when there’s something that we don’t like or find difficult?  How do we approach the tough stuff; the things we’ve done or said or participated in that “stick in our craw,” that dog our steps and are just plain revolting and downright ugly?  What do we do with the less than savory stuff; the stuff that leaves a bad taste in our … [Read more...]

What do you say during times of crisis like these?  You want to say something revelatory and deeply meaningful to buoy the spirits of people and give them sufficient hope to lean into the challenges wrought of the crisis and valiantly press through them.  You want people to be reflective in a way that they are not during the calmer times so that … [Read more...]

Do we search for the truth, or do we search for ways around the truth?  Do we even take the time to consider a question like that out of the long-held assumption that we are, in fact, looking for the truth because (we assume) that that’s the obvious thing to do?  What insanity would behoove us to do anything less?  But do we search for the truth, … [Read more...]