The stairs stretched up in front of me: 154 of them. The climb is ten stories high. Some collegiate athletes run up the steps as part of their training. Mine was a measured pace, not just because of age and limited lung capacity, but also as I slowly walked the… Read More »What Life Might Have Been
Here’s something you probably don’t know. Almost all living organisms have the ability to hear. Yes, all animals have the sense of hearing. So do plants. There are creatures are called “extremophiles.” They live in extreme conditions like at the bottom of the ocean in total darkness, in the artic… Read More »To Listen is To Survive
Facebook and Twitter: those are social media platforms I mostly use. LinkedIn – I have an account, but don’t find it very helpful for my work. While my younger friends all use Instagram, I haven’t gotten on to it. Perhaps that’s because I don’t take many pictures, either of myself… Read More »Spirituality: It’s in the Ordinary
As a child, I was fascinated by caterpillars. Living in rural Western Pennsylvania, there was a variety of caterpillars to be found in the back yard on plants and climbing on the stone wall of my family’s home. I was a bit older when I learned that these caterpillars would… Read More »Transformation: An Evolving Process
If you’re a user of social media, you’ve likely seen a meme frequently shared in recent weeks. It contains an image of an Amish man with a caption something like this: “A tourist asked an Amish man if he was Christian. The Amish man responded, ‘I don’t know. You’ll have… Read More »Ask My Neighbor
We’re having a heat wave. It’s spring and we’ve already had over ten days with temperatures above 90 degrees. That usually doesn’t happen in Atlanta until late July or August. But it’s happened in May. Given the weather, when the workers from the lawn care service arrived late in the… Read More »Faith in Our Communities
We stood in front of a series of fish tanks nearly two stories high. All kinds of sea creatures were in the tanks, many of which I had not seen before. Tanks like these were lined up for several blocks along the waterfront. This wasn’t some sort of aquarium. No,… Read More »A Place at the Table
My mother was a remarkable woman. A child of the Great Depression, she grew up in a company-owned coal town in rural Pennsylvania. She grew to become a gracious woman who was clear thinking, well-informed, determined, and who always had a kind word for others. Most people today don’t know… Read More »Important Lessons from My Mother
