I really like to write and I enjoy public speaking, but I had a hint of my tendency to wordiness when my first stent in seminary produced a comment from one of my favorite professors. I had just finished a fairly intensive philosophy paper for his class and was really sweating the grade he would…
"I'm sorry, but you don't belong here." With that the usher informed me and my family that we were in the wrong spot. This area was reserved for VIP's, not for the regular folks!
Ouch! It reminds me of an old saying my grandmother taught me: "Sticks and stone can break your bones, but words can…
All I can say was it was embarrassing! I could have sworn the person I ran up to in the store was a buddy of mine from High School. I just knew this was going to be a fun reunion, and we'd laugh about that time we all... and we'd talk about the old days…
There is a story about some Christian missionaries going to a place in the African continent to a tribe of people who had never had missionaries before. This tribe also had no written language and no knowledge of the Christian message.
So, the missionaries started out learning their language and working with the tribe to create…
OK, so one of my most favorite movies in the whole world is "Princess Bride" and one of my most favorite scenes in the movie is when Vincent keeps using the word "inconceivable!" Finally, after so many times of hearing this word from Vincent, Inigo Montoya responds "You keep using that word. I do not…
I laughed out loud when a comedian started talking about words that seem to contradict each other. Phrases like "Jumbo Shrimp" and "Military Intelligence" and "Government Efficiency." They just seem to cancel each other out!
On a more serious note, St. Anthony the Great, the desert dweller, once said: "A time is coming when men will…
In the United States alone, the self-help industry; books, seminars, infomercials, personal coaches, audio and video products, was an $11 Billion industry in 2013. This according to Katheryn Shultz from an article in in New York Magazine from January 6th of this year.
(New York Magazine (New York Media, LLC). ISSN 0028-7369.)
Listen to how Ms. Shultz…
Look up songs about "love" and you'll discover so many you won't be able to count them all. Just as an example, the #1 Love Song of "all time" on Billboard magazine is "Endless Love" by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross.
This obsession with love is understandable since it is a basic desire of all people…
"It is a great achievement not to be attracted by things. But it is a far greater achievement to remain dispassionate in the face both of things and of the conceptual images we derive from them."
St. Maximos the Confessor
Isn't that great? The ability to be free from a slavery to desires, but not just desires;…
"It ain't how you start, it's how you end that matters!"
With that, a wise man began instructing a young man about the power of endurance, patience, integrity, and perseverance. You see, the young man was born in a home racked with division. His mother and father had split up when he was 9 years old.…