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The blessing of true community
The best blackberry cobbler I ever ate was served in the mid 1960s during a family reunion. Four generations of the Neal clan harvested pail after pail of the big, juicy fruit from the hillside behind the house in the Oriole Valley where my grandfather was born and raised. The next day some of those Continue reading
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With the eye of the heart
After reading today’s gospel (Luke 12:49-56), I have a bone to pick with Jesus. I understand he might have felt frustrated with those who didn’t see what he saw, who didn’t understand what he understood. I imagine he might have wondered if he’d ever get through to the knuckleheads who wanted to be his disciples Continue reading
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Teach us to pray
One of Jesus’ disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). If there’s ever a time when we need to learn how to pray, this is it. Following every mass shooting, as predictable as sunrise, the comments come, mostly from politicians and public officials, about communities being in their “thoughts and prayers.” Continue reading
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First things first
An approaching vacation brings to mind the words of Pogo, the cartoon character who’s been one of my longstanding spiritual advisors. “Important work,” he said, “like sittin’ around fishin’ remains to be done.” I’m not a fisherman, but I do enjoy “sittin’ around” occasionally. And I recall the words of William Henry Davies (1871-1940), the Continue reading
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The key to life
It would be difficult to count the number of lives Dr. Jonathan Daniels touched, not only the parents and children in his pediatric practice who looked up to him but also the medical students in the school of medicine at the University at Buffalo for whom he was a mentor. “Students at the medical school Continue reading
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Wind the clock, drive the truck
At the end of their long captivity in Babylon, God promised joy and blessings to the house of Israel and its descendants, descendants that include you and me (Isa. 66:10-14). But what if that house is built upon foundations that crumble? If the foundations are destroyed, what can the good do? The question is as Continue reading
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In the debris and clutter
How can you live the best life possible, a life full and satisfying beyond anything you can imagine? The quest for that life is as old as human history. We see it in the search for the holy grail, for the fountain of youth, for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Continue reading
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In praise of a small life
Our unhappiness arises from one thing alone, according to seventeenth-century philosopher and theologian Blaise Pascal. We’re unhappy, he believed, because we’re unable to stay quietly in one room. We can’t remain present and content where we are. We crave different things or more of the same things, and we strive after them. And in our Continue reading
The Sauntering Pilgrim 