What are some things I want to do with my life? That’s one of seven questions Christian author Jon Acuff says could change your life. This first one, What are some things I want to do with my life? is aimed as his material usually is at twenty-somethings.  And rightly so. But such questions and their open-ended…

Film critic Anthony Lane writes this week (but I added the italics), “The Israeli submission for Best Foreign Language Film, ahead of this this year’s Academy Awards, was ‘Bethlehem,’ a thriller about a young Palestinian man, with links to terrorist activities, who is secretly controlled by an Israeli handler. “The Palestinian offering was ‘Omar,’ a thriller about…

Thank you to all who responded and contacted me with your ideas of what’s important in a District Superintendent! It was fun sharing those with our Bishop and our team.

Don Saliers…where do I begin to tell about him? His daughter is one of The Indigo Girls. He was my faculty advisor at the United Methodist Seminary where I got my Master’s degree. He’ll be the leader of a continuing education/spiritual formation event I get to be involved in later this year. And yesterday he…

Here’s your chance — tell a Bishop what you think! Late yesterday afternoon I learned that I’m to coordinate a conference call with our Bishop this evening.  There will be one topic under discussion: what are we looking for in our new District Superintendent?  Your ideas are needed, invited and welcome. (Side Bar: our current one, Rev.…

It’s been very important throughout my career that I’ve met all the guys I’ve copied, because at each stage they’ve said, “Don’t play like me, play like you.” — Eric Clapton I was playing bass. The guy running the recording session was a bass player. Trying to impress him, I added a great little riff in…

“I was glad when they said to me, “Let’s go the house of The Lord.” So begins Psalm 122. Have we forgotten exactly to Whose house we’ve been invited?

Interpret the law within the context of love. That’s from a devotional book’s entry for today, based on Matthew 5:38-42.  If you’re like me and don’t quite have that memorized yet, grab a Bible or simple Google that passage.  You’ll see where the author got the idea for that phrase. Interpret the law within the context of…

“Lost Husbands” was at the top of the yellow sign. It was in a picture on one of the Memory Boards at John’s funeral visitation. (Yup, the same John whose Confirmation Verse was Psalm 37:4.) Standing by the sign was of course John, looking like the rest of us at a county fair or carnival or wherever…

John’s Confirmation Verse was Psalm 37:4.   My first Verse Like That is actually a combo platter of John 3:16 & 17, but then there’s this OTHER Verse Like That. My dad died when I was 17, in August just before my senior year in high school.  After the graveside part of the service I was…