I suppose since it’s the summer solstice today I should find a poem about the sunshine or the long days or the heat of summer. But I was struck instead by Carl Sandurg’s poem “Back Yard” which describes, instead, the moon. The moon gets a shorter time on stage during the summer, and...

Palm Sunday is tomorrow. I know we now call it Passion Sunday, or The Sunday of the Passion, or Palm/Passion Sunday. (No doubt there are other variants as well.) And I understand the reasons for the change. When attendance at Holy Week services dropped off, the folks who guard our worship...

I’ll be honest, I don’t follow basketball all that much anymore, but beyond having so many friends avidly following the “March madness” that culminates this weekend, I used to spend hours upon hours shooting hoops with guys from the neighborhood while in junior high school. We’d talk...

I’ve seen two church signs in the last week that, instead of announcing this week’s sermon or offering a biblical word of encouragement, read simply and pointedly: “Whoever is praying for snow, please stop!” In that spirit – and knowing that across at least the north half of the U.S....

While I am reasonably sure that most of us do not tell the ones we love just how much we love them often enough, I am absolutely sure that is true in my case. Don’t get me wrong, I say those words to my children and wife every day — often several times — and to my parents each...

Monday, of course, is St. Patrick’s Day, when the Irish celebrate their patron saint and most of the rest of us claim just a bit of Irish ancestry in order to join in all the fun. But do you know what Sunday, March 16th is? As it turns out, it’s St. Urho’s Day, the occasion when those of...