What a slog to change your inner scenery. For Christians, Lent can be a time for testing spiritual character. I’m somewhere in between that and a second chance at a failed new year’s resolution. With change, a hopeful landscape blooms. I think of this time as a spiritual awakening to a stronger-and-improved you, which originates […]
I’ll never understand people who marry on Valentine’s Day. Years ago, my daughter wouldn’t listen because traipsing down a red carpet in white lace is a princess story in ultimate romance. But like Cinderella, it’s missing a shoe. Succeeding Valentine anniversaries limp along, loaded with hidden emotional and financial costs. This is fair warning against […]
This month a deluge of holiday gifts are returned to stores. It’s hard to give the perfect gift, and almost as hard to remember getting one. Yet Patricia Kachinsky of Milton still talks about what she received years ago. Back then she told her four young daughters, “I want a memory of something your father […]
I had my first Christmas in prison. No, not as an inmate. In 1998 I was a Bible study volunteer at Webster Correctional Institution, a low security prison for men in Cheshire, CT (since closed). That year we threw a Christmas party for the 9 inmates in our group. However, word got around and 50 […]
Nationally, Thanksgiving is a collective mindset of gratitude to forces greater than ourselves. Like a Norman Rockwell painting, heads bow over grace when families gather, everyone primed for thanks. Yet for many, saying grace is the holiday exception, not the daily rule. Many might ask, “Well, isn’t a group blessing just the official signal to […]