To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here On this Election Day in the United States, it’s clear that no matter who receives the most votes, the path ahead of us is going to be steep. Is there a word of encouragement that all of us can affirm during the climb – one that appeals, as Abraham Lincoln put it, to… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here What’s in a name? More than 150 years ago, when European surveyors were attempting to map the primary geological features on earth, they did their best to retain the names that locals had historically assigned to particular mountains, rivers, and valleys. The exception was an unusually high mountain in the Himalayas that… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here August 14, 2003, was the night that the lights went out in New York City. A blackout shut down the power grid in eight states, mostly in the Northeast, and almost all of the Canadian province of Ontario. Approximately 55 million people had no air conditioning, microwaves, or cell phones for… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here The British press once declared him to be “the wickedest man in the world.” After all, he crossed every line, broke every rule, violated every taboo, and urged others to do the same. Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) actually enjoyed calling himself something else. He preferred the Beast, one of the Bible’s designations… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Five hundred and seven years ago, on the day we’ve come to know as Halloween, Martin Luther changed the course of history. The German Catholic priest and theology professor almost certainly had no intention of launching a movement that would turn Christendom inside-out and upside-down. But that was the outcome of… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here A half-century ago, the Ford Motor Company was embroiled in a national controversy concerning the Pinto, a compact car that sometimes burst into flames when struck from behind. One of the landmark accidents took place not far from my home in Indiana. A Chevy van ploughed into the back of a Pinto and… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here For most of my adult life I’ve been a birdwatcher. Birding, as its practitioners call it, is an interesting hobby. That’s because birds don’t stay still for very long. If you’re trying to visit all 63 national parks in the United States and you haven’t yet made it to Bryce Canyon, you… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier on April 15, 1947. It is difficult to comprehend the sheer hatred he had to face from many fans across the country, even in New York City, where he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Death threats and taunts were everyday realities. The movie 42… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here He spent 20 years of his life screaming his head off. As a drill sergeant, he was (in his own words) “the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work.” So when he… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here America lost one of its most gifted writers in 2016 when 70-year-old Pat Conroy died of pancreatic cancer. Conroy’s fiction (The Prince of Tides, The Water is Wide, The Great Santini) was primarily rooted in the tumult of his own upbringing as a “military brat,” and of the American South that… Read more »