The speed of life tramples time in a cloud of dust. Meeting after meeting drains the day, leaving you spent. Nerves fray, and numbness results. Deloitte commissioned a study that discovered 77 percent of employees encounter and suffer from “burnout,” Herbert Freudenberger coined the term to describe helping professions—nurses and doctors—whose brutal work schedules left them exhausted, listless, and apathetic. They burned [...]
To have more in life, you need less of it. Let me explain. In front of our house, we planted a red-tipped photinia a few years ago. Our goal was to hide a chimney that seemed to stick out of the view. The shrub grew...and grew...and grew. It shot up and spread out, becoming misshapen. We knew we had [...]
Who has not opened their mouth at the wrong time? For most, the taste of shoe leather is something familiar. In today’s Bible class, I taught about James 3, where James instructions about the damage inflicted by careless speech. He says: We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep [...]
We’ve lived through 15 months of lessons and tension. What have we learned on the other side of the pandemic? On April 18, 2020, I (naively) wrote an article called “Decisions, Decisions: What To Do When It Is Over? It described what I thought it would be like when the virus and its threat abated. I only missed the target [...]
On March 11, 2021, I sat in a shrouded cubicle where a nurse took a needle and pierced my upper arm. It was no ordinary shot. It gave freedom from concern, from restriction, and from a disease that had killed more than died in the war in Viet Nam. On that day, the "stuff" in that syringe entered my body, and [...]
It’s spring. For many, spring’s announcement is the appearance of flowers and the greening of grass. For me, it is piles and piles of brown leaves. My Texas Live Oak trees shed leaves in the spring leaving behind the growth that provides respite from the summer sun’s assault. This year the Texas freezer week in February stripped branches at one time. We [...]
The past year left us with a problem. What are we going to do now? Washington Irving wrote the story of a man who goes to sleep only to wake 20 years later. He discovered he missed so much, such as the American Revolution. He lived in a different world than the one he left. His name was Rip Van [...]
Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I’ll love ya tomorrow, it’s only a day away. -From the musical Annie- Tomorrow. We bet on it. Free time sprouts. Problems vanish. Life relaxes. More money. More friends. Weigh less. The problem is tomorrow never comes. It only arrives in the disguise of today. A hamburger joint hung a sign designed to draw customers. It read, “Free burgers [...]
Scott Thompson's family has farmed the Wisconsin soil for over 70 years. He usually plants strawberries. Then, in the fall, he grows raspberries and pumpkins. This year, his crop looked different. He planted joy. You can't plant joy, but you can plant sunflowers. Thompson planted 22 acres of sunflowers. Thompson Strawberry Farm attracted families who picnic, wander fields of florals, and take [...]
In the 1860s, the merchant marine fleet of England suffered many losses. Ships sank in record numbers. Many sank in the harbor. It fell to Samuel Plimsoll, a young naval officer, to spot the problem. As long as a ship had space, cargo kept coming. Soon, the weight pushed the keel lower until it sank beneath the waterline. Plimsoll had the solution, [...]
