Saturday Mornings

One reason why people are uncomfortable with tears and the sight of suffering is that it is a blasphemous assault on their precariously main...

The Republican establishment thinks the grass roots have the power but the grass roots think the reverse. The unions think the corporations ...

My ' Friday poem ' selection for the week -- "Sonnet -- Mutation": They talk of short-lived pleasure—be it so— Pain di...

Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right. -- Ezra Taft Benson

I have noticed ...that I temper what I offer of myself to others based on how I sense it will be received. I am still learning how to offer ...

All men’s misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone . -- Jean de la Bruyere Among other things, I'm pondering what the mo...

It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us learn empathy and compassion and discover our soul. -- Archbishop Desmond Tu...

Older, more experienced Christians often have greater troubles, temptations, and difficulties in the world. God has new work for them to do...

Nothing like the combination of a brilliant winter morning and a really good cry...the gripping story of a fight with cancer at This Life...

My ' Friday Poem ' selection for the week -- "Limitations": The subtlest strain a great musician weaves, Cannot attain ...

I learned long ago that winter will drive you crazy until you get out into it — and I mean “winter” both literally and metaphorically. -...

I used to think ...that I needed to defend myself.  Now I know that God will defend whatever really needs defended in me.

There can be such a sacred beauty to silence. We sat for a few moments in church on Sunday in prayerful  silence ; a pondering of the sou...

I have decided to stick with love,  hate  is too great a burden to bear. -- Martin Luther  King , Jr. We are so grateful for the opp...

A great many people do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it...

Rejection has a powerful grip on us. It so easily slays us. It is unyielding in its pursuit of us. Its threat is ever-present, even if o...

Sometimes, in order to find something, you have to stop looking for it.

So it's searchable: Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy. -- Robert Heinlein

I have noticed ...that I need to put myself in and pursue relationships with people. I seem to stop growing when I choose not to.

Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right. -- Henry Ford

God does not comfort us to make us comfortable only, but to make us comforters. -- John Henry Jowett Give, and it will be given to y...

See story here .... What informs such character , such compassion ?  I continue to wonder if one can only understand poverty, if one has...

My ' Friday Poem ' selection for the week -- "Winter Leafage": Each year I mark one lone outstanding tree, Clad in its ...

I used to think ...that you needed to be strong to help carry things for people. Now I know that we often are able to help others the most b...

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears . -- Nelson Mandela

I have noticed ...that I tend to recoil when personalities get 'large'. My withdrawal, veiled as it may be, perhaps is an attempt...

One paper published by a Duke University researcher in 2006 found that more than 40 percent of the actions people performed each day weren’t...

In a world addicted to 'fast', here's simple truth about ' slow ': TO KEITH MANSHIP: On the slow process of being mor...

This is a tough time to feel optimistic about the future. With the notable exception of impressive global cooperation on climate change an...

Tami  and I have been talking about the new year -- what we would want in it, what it might bring to us, what to pursue , what to be willing...

Wow, what a year 2015 has been!  The last few, I have enjoyed reviewing Saturday Mornings  entries throughout the year -- I am grateful for ...

​ Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act. -- Albert Einstein

On our recent  Christmas Cruise , I read parts of a couple of books.  One was, Love Does , by Bob Goff .  What a wonderful read.  He would s...

Sometimes, gifts from God are most easily recognizable through the hands of people.  Perhaps this is why he asks us to give them.

Election of one is not the rejection of the rest, but ultimately for their benefit. It is as if a group of trapped cave explorers choose one...

Speaking of gifts ...my parents are turning 75 in 2016 and decided to celebrate by taking all of us on a cruise!  We are so grateful, not ...

A Christmas prayer: Stir up thy power, O God and Father, and with great might come among us; and because we are solely hindered by our...

This Christmas, I want to give more gifts than presents. Take a listen to these reflections on gifts.

A delightfully human sermon for us all, this time of year You Are Not Alone; A Sermon on Mary, Elizabeth, and Being Given One to Anothe...

​Great leaders don't see themselves as great; they see themselves as human . -- Simon Sinek

Don’t be fooled. Throughout history, every generation believes it understands how our world works. And yet we look back and realize tha...

My ' Friday Poem ' selection for the week -- "Lullaby for Anyone": Excuse me, lover. I’m busy foretelling and protestin...

​We will change when it hurts bad enough not to.

Got me again (even if a bit enhanced this time).

The last thing we learn about ourselves is our effect. -- William Boyd

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room  alone . -- Blaise Pascal , Pensées

...adapted from one my favorite songs  on the significance of the Christmas Story , Mary's Song in Luke 1 .

There can be a great collision this time of year...where the Christmas-card version of the lives we may want smash up against the realities ...

My ' Friday Poem ' selection for the week -- "I Wanted Peace": ​I wanted peace without pain , but it is through the ...

​When you stop chasing the wrong things you give the right things a chance to catch you. -- Lolly Daskal

Big parts of life will take a fundamental turn once we stop trying to get harmful things to make us feel better and turn our attention to ...

Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him. -- Charles Dickens

What is the value of something when it isn't shared?

What a voice! What a song for the heart of this season...what a truth!

Rujida, a friend of mine, said she was thinking about why she likes to take pictures.  She asked me why I like taking pictures.  Thinking...

My ' Friday Poem ' selection for the week -- "Permanence": Permanence we have already,  Though we act as if we don’t; ...

Avoid multitasking . It's a real productivity killer. Research conducted at Stanford University confirms that multitasking is less produ...

One function of feedback is that it can be used to shape how you want to be.  This can be a helpful strategy for navigating life. But, the...

​ Education is what others do to you  while Learning is what you do to yourself. -- Joichi Ito

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn , and relearn . -- Al...

I need times in the morning outside , to settle into myself, into the things around me. To claw my way past the debris that seems to collect...

...and Conner and Blake will be there!

My ' Friday Poem ' selection for the week -- "Our Pocket Opens": Our burdens are our rocks,  and rocks come in differen...

So it's searchable: Trying to be perfect   ends in burn-out. Being grateful   though the imperfect     lights hearts on fire. ...

Gratitude turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity...it makes sen...

Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving . -- W.T. Purkiser

Quite a gift to us all this weekend...I am so grateful for beauty and the pleasure of enjoying it.  It can just as easily bring us t...

Pain is a gift. It puts us in a position where we’re quicker to be desperate for God. When we seek him, we will find him. -- Lauren Scr...

Everything’s accelerated these days, and the same must be said for grief online. The Internet cycles through all five stages in as many twe...

My ' Friday Poem ' selection for the week -- "MY PATH FOR YOU": Though rocky and steep and sore at times ,  this is my...

It is not  failure   that stops most people, but rather the belief that failure is permanent. -- Jake Ducey

Where you focus your attention determines your emotional state. When you fixate on the problems that you’re facing, you create and prolong ...

​If you want something, you often have to focus in order to get it.

What I need is someone who will make me do what I can. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fear of God kills all other fears . -- Hugh Black

​There may be no greater joy than that which comes from fully applying (giving) oneself to something...or someone. When I am stuck in a (...

My ' Friday Poem ' selection for the week -- "Cheerfulness Taught by Reason": I think we are too ready with complaint I...

I don't know exactly how I feel about the current $15 / hr minimum wage debate  —  lots of ramifications economically and socially.  A...

Within six months, we lost the beautiful house on 2 and a half acres on a hill overlooking a valley, where we had lived for 17 years. We los...

​I seem to be much more ready retroactively, than I am proactively. ...there is something contradictory in this statement.

Does arrogance have a scent? I smell something....

From Peter Enns,  The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It .

Bravery is for the people who have no choice,  people like Chesley Sullenberger and Audie Murphy. Bravery is for the people who are gifte...

My ' Friday Poem ' selection for the week -- "After The Disaster": A picnic in the sequoias, light filtered into planes...

I seem to be more my right size when I am out in nature .  I can see that more clearly in such places.  When I am not there, I often seem t...

Attention is the beginning of devotion. -- Mary Oliver ...and a reminder that it is often from the forced-attention of the  unfamilia...

​There is nothing like deep, extended travel into something unfamiliar to illuminate a new understanding  .

I seem to be in a season now where things feel tome like trying to run in the dark -- like I did this morning, along a familiar, but very u...

So it's searchable: When I said, "My foot is slipping,"   your unfailing love, Lord, supported me. When anxiety was grea...

You don't find peace   until you love somebody else . -- Ben Rector, Note To Self

My ' Friday Poem ' selection for the week, entitled " Listen to Me ": Listen to me, please, I need to talk to you; Give...

Rushing makes spaces small.  Being still in a space can reveal to us just how big it is.  How could we have scurried right by it, without ...

​You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.
 -- Scott Peck

​Do you ever feel like something is getting away from you?  Even when you feel preoccupied with finding it? I feel like this is happening ...

Fear will push you to avert your eyes. Fear will make you think you have nothing to say. It will create a buzz that makes it impossibl...

We are not  human beings   having a  human  experience, we are spiritual beings, having a human experience . -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardi...

Perhaps it is we, who live rarely with such displacement, who suffe r the most...because we don't recognize where our citizenship real...