Every Christmas (or Thanksgiving, or Veteran’s Day, or …) we encounter the same tactic from marketers. We are presented with specials that give us the expected message of that particular holiday. Mind you, there are some specials I have seen that have been reworked to give a particular politically approved message (sometimes conservative and sometimes […]

Another December 7th has come around. This is one of the every few years when it falls on a Sunday. I have recently woken up and am getting ready to go to church. Seventy-three years ago, 10 years before I was born, many soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen were doing the same thing on Pearl […]

One thing I have desired of the Lord, That will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord All the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord, And to inquire in His temple. – Psalm 27 For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand. […]

  “And sure enough, I will contradict tomorrow what I said today. The reason is simple. The facts coming from Staten Island in the case of Eric Garner’s tragic death differ as much from Michael Brown’s shooting in Ferguson as Mr. Brown’s death differed from Trayvon Martin’s. As I have said for months, I believe […]

The following is quoted from the English version of the press release today: We, Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, express our profound gratitude to God for the gift of this new encounter enabling us, in the presence of the members of the Holy Synod, the clergy and the faithful of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, […]

Recently, a poster on my blog critiqued my use of an Old Testament quotation from the Old Testament about strangers and aliens and my using the quote on the subject of immigrants in the USA. It was a reasonable critique that I would like to answer. The quote I used was “And if a stranger […]

Up above you can read two prayers for Thanksgiving Day by two different pastors. The Rev. Samuel F. Pugh was editor of World Call, a missions magazine for the Disciples of Christ. Chaplain W.T. Kennedy served in World War II as a Navy Chaplain. Both prayers are important because they place thanksgiving in the context […]

This Thanksgiving, it is indeed proper and right to worship and to give thanks to our God for his many mercies and kindnesses toward us. There is an old Protestant hymn that I still love for this season. It was not written for Thanksgiving Day, as it was written in the 1500’s by the Dutch […]

State appropriations for public higher education have just faced another tough year. And yet, public institutions have faced many such years over the past three decades. Despite steadily growing student demand for higher education since the mid-1970s, state fiscal investment in higher education has been in retreat in the states since about 1980. In fact, […]

When I came out of the Army, I had been trained as a Medical Laboratory specialist. I had performed what was considered advanced work in the Third Army Regional Medical Laboratory. But, in a civilian setting, I was nothing. Medics who served in Viet Nam and even performed minor surgery were no longer allowed to […]