To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Beirut, Lebanon, was once considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It was known as the Paris of the Middle East. All that changed during the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s. Beirut was devastated. Citizens fled the city as fast as they could. Sami was a Lebanese Christian who,… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here When my two brothers and I came into the world, we each received a security blanket. My older brother Scott got a blue one. My younger brother Bruce got a green one. My security blanket was yellow. Interestingly, when my brothers and I met with our parents a decade ago to… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here His real name was Jean-François Gravelet. But shortly after he launched his career in the 1840s as Europe’s greatest “funambulist” or tightrope walker, the Frenchman began calling himself Charles Blondin. And it wasn’t long before that had morphed into Blondin the Great. He was a fairly ordinary-looking fellow – just five-foot five inches… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here In 1988, moviegoers fell in love with a French film that has virtually no soundtrack and minimal dialogue. Human dialogue, that is. L’Ours (that is, The Bear) is the story of a young cub whose mother is killed by a rockslide in 1885 British Columbia. The orphaned cub now has no realistic hope for survival. Touchingly,… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here. Throughout the season of Advent – which this year encompasses the four weeks leading up to December 25 – we’re looking at classic Christmas movies and how they might connect us to the miracle of God choosing to become a human being. Before December 1965, no one had ever seen anything quite like… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. In 1965, guitarist Stephen Stills noticed an ad in Variety magazine. A casting company for a new music-oriented TV show was seeking “four insane boys, ages 17-21.” Stills decided to audition. His music skills were excellent, but his misshapen teeth and ratty hair were not what the producers were looking for. He returned… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. More than six decades ago, an engineer from the Boeing company boarded a passenger plane driven by propellers. After introducing himself to the man sitting next to him, he began to talk excitedly about the project to which he had given much of his life – the development of the Boeing 707… Read more »
America lives in the shadow of 9-11. Japan lives in the shadow of a different kind of national disaster, commonly called 3-11. On March 11, 2011, an earthquake of unprecedented strength rocked the country. The massive tremor, which registered 9.0 on the Richter Scale, generated a tsunami that in places topped 130 feet. It inundated 200 square miles of coastline and traveled… Read more »
Anyone who has ever owned a cat – which is to say, has been owned by a cat – quickly comes to realize they are creatures of deep mystery. And no mystery has been more fascinating over the centuries than the phenomenon of “cat-righting.” How is it possible that cats always seem to land on their feet? Whether falling from… Read more »
One of the charms of the Golden Gate Bridge is that it almost appears to be fragile. That’s astonishing – especially since it sits alongside the San Andreas Fault, one of the most active geological features in North America. But engineers are convinced that the bridge is probably the safest place to be the next time San Francisco is rocked… Read more »
