Disappearing Christmas Trees

Raise your hand if your Christmas Tree is still up. Okay, both of you can go read something else. This is for the folks who took the tree down when the last gift was unwrapped. 😀 I know what you are thinking. “Why would we keep the tree up if Christmas is...

A Different Nativity — or Is It?

  I’m a social media junkie. When I cruise through Facebook and Twitter, I feel like John Wesley on a digital destrier, riding from village to village with good news, learning about the people of that hamlet, and providing presence albeit in a limited form....

Doing What We Can

I just left a Finance Committee Meeting for Grace UMC, the church I’m presently serving. And I just witnessed a very admirable act. “Heroic” is a little too strong a word, but not by too much. Let me offer some background. Grace has had some...

“Would You Know Him If You Saw Him?”

A couple of days ago, I was at the church when one of our volunteers came by. She was there to pick up a load of toys for the Angel Tree charity we’re supporting this year. With her were six teen-agers, all boys, who were ready to help. As we carried bags out to...

Dave Brubeck Says Hello

Yesterday marked the passing of one of my heroes. Dave Brubeck was just shy of his 92nd birthday, and a phenomenal influence on musicians of every caliber and genre. He was an arranger par excellance and did almost perfectly what I talked about in a recent blog piece...