(THE FINAL EIGHT RHYMES) It’s hard to believe that my dad has been gone almost twenty years. Our family took a trip back east in August 2003 to visit him in the hospital, and then I returned again once or twice to see him in the ICU after radical surgery which left him unable to…
Month: March 2023
From Broken Mess to Brokenness
(EIGHT MORE RHYMES) The other day, I tried to write the word “brokenness”, and my computer auto-corrected to “broken mess”. I thought, what an appropriate title for a blog. We often find ourselves in the middle of a mess, and we are all broken people. Two realities that coexist in life. I don’t know about…
Peace in the Broken Pieces
(EIGHT MORE RHYMES) Forty-five years ago, I had just finished my second year of teaching second grade in an elementary school outside Harrisburg, PA. The teachers of that tiny school were invited to a faculty BBQ to celebrate the end of another successful year. Life was good, and I was feeling a bit more confident…
Eight More Rhymes
The Purpose of Lent The season of Lent isn’t a “dog and pony show”. Many verses in Scripture speak of the hubris that often accompanied religious leaders when they showed up for their ceremonial practices. Interestingly, the three traditional pillars (emphases) of Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, were places where piety often went out the…
The Faith It Takes to Saddle up a Donkey
I have really been helped by reading large portions of the Old Testament in the Message Translation. The late Eugene Peterson spent a good portion of his life translating the Bible into The Message so that un-scholarly people like me, who did not want to learn Hebrew or Greek, could understand it. In the book…