Fanny Crosby wrote church hymns…over 8000 of them. Titles trickle through memories with ease. They include Pass Me Not and Blessed Assurance. With such a gift and exuberance for words of hope, you would assume, Crosby lived a charmed life. And you would be wrong. She lived most of her life in darkness. When she was 6 weeks old, she caught [...]
One of the dawning truths of living long enough is life weaves problems into every person’s life. Paul told the Corinthians of the “light and momentary afflictions” which enter life (2 Cor. 4:17). We exaggerate most of them into overpowering and everlasting. The great tragedy is to hide from them as a child plays hide-and-seek in plain sight. We hide our struggles [...]
Marie Kondo is a rock star. The diminutive, soft-spoken Japanese invaded America in a way Hirohito could only dream of. Do we need to “Kondomari” our lives as well as our homes? Kondo wrote the book The Magic of Tidying Up. The marketing manipulators at Netflix launched her into fame with by paring her with new year resolutions. Her program Tidying Up [...]
I sat in my regular coffee shop booth, hammering away on the keyboard of a powerful computer. It was then, he caught my eye. Seated at a nearby table was a man with an open spiral notebook in front of him. No phone was visible. No computer, no laptop, no electronics at all. He simply scratched out his work with a regular [...]
During the week of Christmas, my wife and I went to see Mary Poppins Returns. I was skeptical. As a baby boomer who watched the 1964 original in a drive-in theater, Mary Poppins is Julie Andrews. I listened to records of the music as a kid and loved the movie. Now, as a man in his 7th decade, I did not want [...]
December’s cold winds signal changes. For animals, they head to caves to hibernate. Humans light fireplaces and eat comfort foods. December for me is also a time to review the past year and prepare for the next one. I am a believer in reviews and accountability. Why Review The Year? So why, in the hustle and bustle of a rushed December, take [...]
Western society worships at the altar of position. Whether it be business, religion, government, or academia, the guy at the top gets the spotlight. That leaves someone else, someone more important, in the dark. Once I had a half-day layover in London. I caught a train, went downtown to wander around. I did not know where I was going but stumbled onto [...]
At the season of Thanksgiving, the trite advice is “be thankful.” For most people, it is a hazy phrase. The remedy for most first-world maladies is simple. Practice gratitude. What Gratitude Does for Us? “The practice of gratitude can have dramatic and lasting effects in a person’s life,” said Robert A. Emmons, professor of psychology at UC Davis. Think of [...]
At some age, you realize that all the “stuff” you paid good money for is just “stuff. It’s then you know it’s not about the accumulation of things but the accumulation of life. Life comes through a series of experiences. In 1997 MasterCard International introduced a new series of commercials. The first was of a father sitting at a baseball game [...]
Insight is headed to a new world. To get there, it needs to check and change its trajectory. Insight, a Mars lander, is scheduled to touch down on the red planet on November 26, 2018. It is on trajectory but to stay on the right path, engineers must do constant bearings. Six times during the journey, it will fire its thrusters to [...]
