Today is Yom Kippur on the Jewish calendar. This no-work day of synagogue services, prayer, and fasting is the most solemn holy day in Judaism’s annual cycle of holy/holidays. Today observant Jewish people will recite a long prayer of confession as they lightly tap their chest in a spiritual and physical act of contrition. Toward […]
Seems to me that one of the most self-defeating ways to try and be “holy” is to make it our purpose to be right about everything and wrong about (and in) nothing. I say that after reviewing some seemingly obscure details, and a foundational concept of the whole Bible, from the record of Leviticus— the […]
NPR’s All Thing’s Considered host Madeleine Brand recently did an interview with Forest Whitaker, the executive producer of a 5 part video documentary called “Brick City.” The series tells the story of Mayor Cory Booker’s attempt to restore safety and security to the streets of Newark, New Jersey. Part of the interview includes an emotional […]
My experience with my son’s American bulldog has been an on-again, off-again kind of relationship. Although I’ve occasionally helped to take care of Buddy while my son and his wife were out of town, and even though I’ve never raised my hand or voice at the big boy, every once in a while he acts […]
Some in our day have taken issue with the idea of a national leader who admits before a watching world that his country has made mistakes that have contributed to international problems. Reminds me of a story that my barber told me earlier this week. He said that while volunteering to cut hair at a […]
In “How the Mighty Fall,” author Jim Collins analyzes how once successful corporations cycle through predictable patterns of decline. In his analysis, problems begin when companies take their success for granted and begin to stray from what worked for them in the past. Collins goes on to say the tendency is for managers to overextend […]
The Dead Sea is dying. Water levels of what the Bible also calls The Salt Sea, already rest at the lowest on earth (1378 feet below sea level), and are dropping at a rate of three feet a year. The problem has developed not only from natural weather cycles, but also from the amount of […]
A Science article by Henry Fountain in the New York Times yesterday tells an interesting story about the little Gecko whose animated likeness has been so cleverly used in the TV Gecko/Geico Insurance commercials. According to the author, “Like some other animals, the gecko can perform a neat trick when threatened by a predator: it […]
While thinking lately not only about some bloody 15th and 16th century periods of church history, but also about the way church people continue to bitterly divide over theological and political differences, I’m reminded how important it is to try to attach authority to no more and no less than what the Bible says. In […]
Labor Day weekend marks the symbolic end of summer, back to school, back yard barbecues, and the beginning of the college and professional football season. This year some of us might also get a chance to catch a few holes of the rain-delayed end of the PGA Deutsche Bank Championship Golf tournament, or see if […]
