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A Gen-Xer Reflects on What Happened to Gender
In 1972, a record album and illustrated book were released entitled Free to Be…You and Me. Two years later, a special based on the album was aired on ABC. Free to Be…You and Me was groundbreaking. Starring many famous actors and singers of the time, including Roberta Flack, Alan Alda, Mel Brooks, and Marlo Thomas,…
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Heaven’s Immigration Policy
I just dropped my kid off at the playground to go swinging for an hour. Alex loves to swing, possibly more than anything else in the world. As I was leaving, I noticed a car parked there with several bumper stickers. I paused to read them. One of them read: “Democrats want to raise taxes…
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Listening to the “Other Side”
I am politically left of center. On some issues, such as LGBT rights, I’m certainly liberal. On others, such as economic issues, I’m less convicted, but I still lean left on most things. Our current polarized society feels like it’s divided into two tribes: The Liberals and The Conservatives. Or call them whatever you like…Progressives…
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What I Didn’t Say to You at a Funeral
Last week, I had the honor of officiating at a graveside funeral. It was simple. The family wanted only the simplest form of funeral – no sermon, no eulogy, just the scripture, the prayers, the commendation, the committal. The woman whom I buried never joined my church – but she was an active worshiper there…
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Can you really be “objective”?
I have a group of friends from my college days who get together weekly on Zoom. I’m not there every week; some of us go in and out. But each week we pose questions to the group, and discuss them. It’s a great opportunity to discuss questions, sometimes silly, sometimes deep, sometimes difficult, with people…
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A Parable about the Fight over “Cancel Culture”
We’ve all heard a lot about “Cancel Culture” lately, how Fox News and other right-wing media sources have decried the recent changes to such properties as Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head. I was trying to leave it alone, trying to ignore it all, letting it just play out and eventually run out of fuel.…
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A Conspiracy of Letters
Wake up, sheeple. There’s something going on around us that you need to know about. So, I was minding my own business, just browsing through The American Dictionary of the English Language, when I noticed something that disturbed me. The word Democrat was listed before the word Republican. And not just a few words before…
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How do you do it?
Every time I read a book about being Black in the United States, I become sad at the horrible way that people of color have been treated, and continue to be treated, in what is so often called “the land of the free.” Every time I read an article this year about the 100th anniversary…
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Phones No More
I had a wonderful weekend away at Bear Creek Camp, the Lutheran church camp I’ve been connected to in various ways for my entire life. My family and I went there for a special “Labor Day Family Camp,” an event I last attended in 1987 or so. Wow. That’s a long time. Anyway, while I…
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Some Wounds are Still Open
I just read Wendell Berry’s book The Hidden Wound, an extended essay about racism, told in part as a memoir of his childhood experiences with two Black people who touched his life. The Hidden Wound was written in 1969, but it’s remarkable how applicable it is to today’s world. Berry wrote this: I am trying…
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