Imagine with me: Hillary and Donald (careful now, not their real names) were high school sweethearts who married in St. Pat’s Cathedral in NYC. In love and on top of the world, their future was bright and sparkled with five beautiful children and a lovely home in a good, old-fashioned neighborhood. Hillary was a part-time[...]
Freedom? Meh . . . no, thank you. Arnold Ray Jones got high weekly on crack cocaine the year before his arrest and he’d failed to complete several drug treatment programs. He was finally sentenced for drug trafficking in 2002 and has spent fourteen years of twenty in prison in Beaumont, Texas. This year he[...]
Because I said so. The words every child hates to hear. When I was two and Momma forbid me to take my little neighbor’s birthday present, I didn’t question her. A few years later, though, I was old enough to ask (demand), “Why?” She explained that other’s possessions didn’t belong to me and that I[...]
I’m a double extrovert . . . and we are high-energy and hard workers. It is not blood but adrenaline that courses through our veins! We can spin circles around people, get ten times the work done, plan light years ahead, and solve fifteen problems at once. But the problem is (as with all of[...]
Our cantor adjusted his guitar, cued the pianist and adult choir, and learned into the microphone, saying: “Our entrance hymn will be ‘Lift High the Cross’ found on Page 376. Now, please stand as we begin our celebration of the Eucharist.” A thousand people rose and filled the church to the rafters with glorious singing.[...]
“Don’t fight him like a wolf! Fight him like a MAN!” These wise words come during a fierce battle from the brave black panther, Bagheera, to his young charge, Mowgli the man-child, in Disney’s latest live action, The Jungle Book. The special effects were gorgeous and bigger than life, and the story was funny, sweet,[...]
From Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ” Every day people are carrying crosses up their own Via Dolorosa. They stumble, get back up, and fall again. And you are invited to give them comfort and aid. But are you helping or hurting? Heavy lifting helps! This Palm Sunday we’ll read again how Jesus, under the[...]
“Rose, can you please come right away? I’m in the hospital. They say I have bleeding on the brain.” Oh, dear. After I finagled my way into the ICU, I found my sweet, eighty-seven year old friend lying in bed with a bruised and swollen face, stitches in her forehead, wired to flashing and beeping[...]
“I hate him! I hope he burns in hell!” Gulp! How do you handle it when someone spits out such fury? What do you say? What do you do? I’ve heard this too many times in my twenty-plus years ministering to the separated and divorced. Sadly, I’ve witnessed well-meaning but misdirected responses such as: Oh,[...]
“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you…” Well, that’s pretty bold of James and John, the sons of Zebedee! In Mark’s Gospel (Mark 10: 35-45) we hear about how these two practically demanded the choice seats in heaven. And yet if we see God as a Loving Father, he[...]
