My mother is terrified of water, and I’ve been afraid of water since I was a toddler and got knocked over by waves at the beach. My parents made sure I went to swimming lessons–over and over again–hoping that learning how to swim would dissolve the dread and replace it with confidence. I became competent,… Read More
Creative Fun
I forgot how satisfying an afternoon of crafting can be until I got the invitation to a baby shower. It included this assignment: Bring a letter of the alphabet for a wall decoration for the baby’s room. It can be made out of anything! Be creative. I was assigned the letter T. So I sat… Read More
Negative or Positive?
What am I going to focus on personally? What am I going to focus on in community? What am I going to focus on nationally? When I think about the Olympics in London this year, will I dwell on the badminton scandal or the U.S. women’s volleyball team who were determined to give each game… Read More
What’s on the back of my eyelids?
“Ready for a surprise? You blink twenty-five times every minute. Each blink takes one-fifth of a second. So if you take a ten-hour automobile trip, averaging forty miles per hour, you’ll drive thirty-three miles with your eyes closed!” (Chuck Swindoll, Insight for Living, http://www.insight.org) This is the first paragraph of a July letter from Pastor… Read More
Dealing with Suffering
A three-year-old little boy dies suddenly. Healthy and happy one day, but doesn’t wake up the next morning. No warning for the family–PAIN is coming. No warning for the community What do we do? What can we say? We join with the suffering family with our tears and our prayers–the lament of sorrow grows from… Read More
Is it time to renovate our party system?
I got so frustrated with political agendas, ads, and my inability to separate fact from fiction, that for many years I just stepped away. Somehow it doesn’t seem right for me to avoid it any longer. An interview with author Mickey Edwards caught my attention this week and really started the wheels spinning. Do the… Read More
Does faith affect how I serve in public office?
I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or snort with disgust. Mitt Romney is a Mormon. Kennedy was a Catholic. The press—and let’s be honest, all of us—are having a field day discussing whether or not his faith will have any bearing on his views and actions if he becomes president of the United States.… Read More
