Somewhere in last evening’s College Bowl marathon* there was a clip from a news conference that has haunted me.  But not in a good way. It happened at the annual Beef Bowl, a banquet before The Rose Bowl. Mark Asper, an Oregon Ducks lineman and a former Eagle Scout, jumped up and performed the Heimlich Maneuver on a man at…

“Yeah, so far his flight’s like twelve minutes late, but  we still — gotta go, there’s his plane!” All I could really see clearly in the airport’s window wall last night was a reflection of the crowd waiting to board once the arriving passengers were off and the plane had been quickly serviced. I couldn’t…

Lost in the woods. Not a good sound to that phrase, is there?  But it’s where  the young Howard Thurman was,  lost somewhere in the thickly-wooded hills farther from home than he’d ever been.  And it was beginning to storm. Momentarily scared, he suddenly remembered some advice from a elderly family member for whenever he…

The Cold Laser burned my eye. My retina, to be exact. The surgeon could not have been better and the rips in my retina are repaired. But walking back into the doctor’s office for an annual follow-up, that green laser and its searing pain came flooding back. I kept stumbling over our Advent image: “The…

“The people that walk in darkness” sounds either ominous or silly. Walking around in the dark, bumping into something, tripping over something else, or being hit by the unseen can be scary at the very least. But walking around in the dark when there’s a light switch over there, or a flashlight in your hand, or…

She took me to the hospital. I kept insisting to still-newlywed-Patty that it really wasn’t that big of a deal. Trying to get back into bed without waking her, without turning on light, the table hadn’t been exactly where I’d remembered it. Which sound woke her up first—me, uhm expressing displeasure at the shock and…

Again, thank you to all who’ve been sharing about your favorite Christmas lights! Some on here (leave a comment today), some on FB (always good seeing you there), some on my cell phone (anytime)  and several in person around town…great hearing from you. This is important because part of our heritage with all this Christmas…

Clark Griswold aside, my favorite Christmas Lights are caught in a two-way tie: lights on a Christmas trees by a window, and the candles on a church’s Advent wreath. The lights on our tree at home celebrate all sorts of people and gifts, and being by a window can be seen by others.  That’s good.…

According to today’s reading in a great devotional book Tony Campolo recommends, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, Dec. 6 is Feast of St. Nicholas Day.     Two certainties are that he entrusted himself to Jesus Christ at an early age and that when his parents died he gave his inheritance to help…

Christmas lights are everywhere: on Christmas trees, in front yards, on porches, in house windows, in downtowns, in stores at malls, and —if you look— in the eyes of people all around you. Let’s think together for several days about Christmas lights.  Leave a message here and let me know what some of your favorites…