My dysfunctional family

I am more and more a believer in the dysfunctional family. Mostly because I are one.
We were finally convicted of dysfunction charges the day before Thanksgiving. The tension started the night before as we gingerly approached the topic of a starting time for our trip to grandma’s. My wife is more of the What’s the hurry? while the boys (and I) [...]

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God and Ernest Hemingway

Knowing that Ernest Hemingway took his own life, it is hard to avoid reading between the lines of The Old Man and the Sea.
In the novel, the old fisherman is long overdue for a catch, 84 days to be exact, and his peers consider his luck gone. We know that something big is coming when the [...]

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Thankful? Me?

No one has it made.
I discover it over and over. Some may have it better, but no one has it made. Everyone is scratching and clawing through something, and pain is relative to the person carrying it. That means everyone has a reason to justify a gratitude-poor soul. Everyone was forgotten, left off a list, and told to make [...]

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Avoiding God?

 Just in case you think that meeting Jesus would solve all your doubts, the crueler critics of his day spoke of him as a glutton and drunkard.
In one of the more revealing passages in the New Testament (Luke 7:31-35), Jesus and the naysayers face off. As far as his critics are concerned, their murmerings about [...]

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Grandma and Grandmother

Despite their long absence, these ladies keep showing up.
Mae was my maternal grandmother. Her farmer-wife ways were obvious. She cooked three large meals a day, cared for calves and gardens, and called my grandpa “father!” if she caught him sharing a salty song with the grandkids. Like an automatic door, her arms opened any time [...]

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Potter and Piety

In this age of Harry Potter it seems almost silly to point this out, but faith is not magic.
The magic of Potter literature is hearty stuff. This magic does not require character or honesty, no relationship with a Higher Power. Magic only requires study, sharp wand work, and good inflection. How easy is that? Can you imagine–a way [...]

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Larger than life

Dave later told me that he was not the mountain I thought him to be. In fact, he was at the low point of his faith in God.
He was raised in the Philippines, child of missionaries and strong in faith, but the Marine Corps had taken its toll. The early years of adulthood are tough [...]

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Growing Up

I hate to tell them, but I’ll have to. My sons probably define “growing up” as the completion of the few years that still separate them from legal adulthood. How funny. They don’t know what they don’t know. 
With a twenty-five year head start on them, I’ve found that there is no magic land where everyone [...]

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