…needs to be knighted, not lighted, according to this poem by ABC’s Diane Hoelscher. (For those who have ears to hear). Knight the ignited Candle’s Flickering Flame of Faith. Not the Dark; Even a flickering knight is noble, No matter how deep the dark; In the battle with darkness So easily banished in the Sun; […]

We have those experiences in our lives, those Aha! moments. The first is certainly the moment of birth. When you, as a healthy baby, emerged from the womb and were exposed to the light of reality, you probably cried. The first surprise of awareness is shocking. Other moments when the light went on for you […]

What’s he thankful for? His missing baby chiclets? His new fly hair style? His swaggerific parents in the background? That scrumdiddlyumptious roast turkey ready to be eaten? I like to think my man is thankful just because he’s a thankful person. I’ve noticed that some people are incurably thankful, even when things seem to be […]

Why do we have religions? Because there are some questions that can’t be answered by examining the world around us and trying to understand the meaning of everything. Four important questions every individual person asks and religions attempt to answer are Where did I come from? Who am I? What should I do? Where am […]

Last Saturday night, I attended the memorial service for Rabbi Marvin Gross, who many of us knew in his role as the Executive Director of Union Station Homeless Services for 21 years. He was an ordained rabbi and served as leader of two synagogues in the past, but during his years in Pasadena, his “congregation” […]

That’s one of the important lessons I’ve learned in life. I know, it’s the opposite of what we usually hear when we’re faced with a challenging situation: “Don’t just stand there; do something!” But I’ve found that more often than not, leaping into action makes things worse, whether the action is running toward the problem […]

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. . . . . With it we […]

Two parables of Jesus are recorded side by side in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Both of them compare the Kingdom of God to simple realities everyone would be familiar with in Jesus’ day. The first parable is about how a tiny mustard seed grows into a fairly large tree: He said therefore, “What is […]

I was laying back in our hot tub on a particularly clear night. There were stars scattered all over the dark sky. MY FIRST THOUGHT – Nothing has changed! I was viewing the same magnificent splendor that the shepherds on the hillside looked at in amazement the night Jesus was born, 2,000 years ago. And […]

Some statement on a recent TV news program made me think of how harsh and unsympathetic the world can be to the various ways human beings are hurting. Then, I began hearing encouraging reports in the ABC family that there’s really a lot of caring going on. Sunday a-week-ago someone* shared in the worship service […]