“Here’s a little song I wrote. You might want to sing it note for note. Don’t worry! Be happy!” Yep, I loved that song, for about a day, and then it was being played so often I got sick of it rather quickly! But still, Bobby McFerrin captured in his “little song” a notion we Christians…
On this Sunday we read of a man so enslaved to his passions, so gripped by his addictions, that he is inhabited by many demons. Christ heals him and he is found at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. The lifestyle of the Orthodox Faith is meant to empower you to…
My little brother and I were typical brothers growing up. We would engage in “sibling rivalry” now and again! But we were being raised by a single mother who worked full-time and cared for us full-time as well. One such event when we were a bit older elicited a phrase from my mom to us…
Several years ago there was a song that was popular on Christian radio stations that still strikes me as a powerful reminder of a central truth: People Need the Lord.
"Every day they pass me by, I can see it in their eyes. Empty people filled with care. Headed who knows where. On they go through…
"My Want-To is broke." With that, my grandmother gave me another insight into real life. She was describing a very common problem all of us face. We know what we should do, but we don't do it. Why? As my grandmother said, our "want-to" is broken.
One of the central revelations to me when I was…
A quote attributed to Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, sums up our challenges with missing the point: "I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."
The truth is, with all the ways we…
It matters. It really does. The longer I live, the more I interact with others, and the more I grow older in life, the more I seed HOW I say something is as important as WHAT I say. This is especially true when I'm dealing with people who have just met me. This is not…
"Identity politics" is all the rage now. We take a few words or even feelings about ourselves and weave an entire identity out of our undisciplined passions and call it a "community." We segment the population into "rich" or "poor" "white" or "black" or "hispanix" or any other made-up group and then we dump folks…
It was actually, physically, painful to hear her say those words. I was at the point of both tears and disbelief. You see, we had the opportunity to help some homeless people in our community by participating, as a parish, in a wonderful ministry to homeless families in our county. We are blessed to live…
It’s no secret that family life is filled with challenges. To be honest, I don’t think we’ve seen the real fallout of all the social experiments we Americans have engaged in since all these movements have been demanding this or that change in society. One of the interesting, if unintended consequences, of these movements, is…