Modern Stories of the Way

“Living in Hope” A long holiday break over Thanksgiving gives time for reflection and hope.  Since I don’t do shopping except online and at the local hardware store, I avoid a lot of angst every holiday season.  The best holiday shopping I ever did was giving my credit card to my daughter, who did all [...]

November 15-16, 2019 “The Power of the Office” Marie Yovanovitch’s riveting testimony was interrupted one hour into the proceedings by a Presidential tweet in which the President questioned the career diplomat’s competence, noted the President of Ukraine did not like her and pointed out his power to fire diplomats at will.  Defending his attempt to [...]

“Our Climate Changing” One of “the hottest topics” of our day is climate change.  It involves all of us, since all of us live on this one planet called Earth.  Not everyone acknowledges the concern that many, even most of us feel for the future of all of us. Time Magazine in its Special Climate [...]

“Strange Times” The assault on our democracy is unprecedented, since perhaps the time of Joe McCarthy.  Our divided government accomplishes very little, being consumed by the fires of partisan politics.  Our democratic process is broken and even a presidential impeachment may not be enough to fix it.  What is going on in our democracy? It [...]

“Sins of Commission, Sins of Omission” October 10, 2019 In reflection upon our President’s behavior in the past few weeks, I thought it might be helpful to organize his behavior around the Book of Common Worship’s rubric of “sins of omission, sins of commission.”  In this prayer book of the Presbyterian Church, we are given [...]

“…for good men to do nothing” “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”                                                                                           Edmond Burke This well known, but often forgotten statement sums up the measure of our times.  Evil is triumphing around us, among us and sometimes in us, and good men and women [...]

“He Who Shall Not Be Named” In the infamous Harry Potter series, the author, J.K. Rowlings, masterfully increased the drama of the series by not invoking Voldemort’s name.  By so doing, she illustrated the contempt and fear the general populous had for this dark wizard.  In similar manner, many in our culture are refusing to [...]

“No Exoneration” As the Robert Mueller report comes to its conclusion with Mr. Mueller’s personal testimony to Congress, we are able to finally say one thing for sure.  The President called Trump is not exonerated by Robert Mueller’s report.  Though hamstrung in his testimony by Trump’s handpicked, in the pocket Attorney General, William Barr, Mueller [...]

“Wonder Dog” In the on-going saga of our Great Dane, “Finn”, whom I affectionately call “Big Dog,” as he is so big, I feel it is my duty to provide another chapter of his on-going very event-filled life.  Last episode, I shared the sadness of his heart condition.  Today, I tell a much better report, [...]

“Big Dog” July 7, 2019 Today is my wife’s mother’s birthday.  Nell is 85 years old.  Dorothy and Hannah took her a special cake to celebrate.  She said that this was one of the nicest birthday cakes she had every received.  It had blue, pink and green flowers made of buttercream on top, from a [...]