It is my Christmas ritual to share this piece every year. Maybe you can read it to a child… maybe you will just read it to yourself. I hope you read it, enjoy it and find value in it … Most people — certainly those younger than 60 — may only know “Ben-Hur” as a […]
Category Archives: Spirit
Thanksgiving
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, a day which was first declared a federal holiday in 1863 in the midst of the War Between the States by President Abraham Lincoln. It pains me to think that 150 years later, it is more often referred to as the day before black Friday. The year has been a challenging […]
Uncivilized
Galena, Alaska sits on the north bank of the Yukon River on the 64th N parallel, just two parallels shy of the Arctic Circle. Flying out of Galena’s now inactive Air Station in the summer of 1973 in my T-33, I once saw the sun set and rise within a 15-minute stretch. As I climbed […]
A Reflection on Pope Francis
I made my first trip to Argentina in 1990. Although I took one year of Spanish in college in 1967, I was far from fluent, so I carried a small pocket dictionary. After a 15-hour flight from St. Louis through Miami, my clothes were quite wrinkled. The first word I learned from that dictionary was […]
Mitakuye Oyasin
Mrs. tVM and I have the granddaughters — 2 and 5 — here this week until Saturday. This afternoon, young Xylia, 5-years-old said, “Dziadek — she calls me ‘Dziadek’ which is Grandfather in Polish — I think there is a hummingbird in the pool.” Sure enough, the gentle soul floated lifelessly on the surface. I […]
Martin Sheen: A Hero who Broke Through
Yesterday morning as I waited in the foyer of an assisted living facility, I glanced at a basket filled with old magazines. The magazine on top of the pile was the AARP magazine. I am not an “AARP guy,” but the cover picture was a picture of a smiling Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez, better known […]
The First Stone
Early in the week, I read an interesting piece on the Spirituality and Practice website entitled, “The First Stone or Hypocrite Stone.” It is an unique practice presented by Tom Cowan. I do not know Tom Cowan, but his suggestion makes perfect sense to me… “… carry a small stone in your pocket or purse […]
Chief Joseph
In 1879, Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé Indians traveled to Washington, D.C. and met with President Rutherford B. Hayes and other government leaders to plead his case to return his tribe – displaced from the Northwest to Oklahoma’s Indian Territory – to their original home in Oregon. Chief Joseph was known as a skilled […]
An Example for your Children
Why are Muslims hateful? That is clearly an unfair question because I am certain Muslims are not hateful. If you want to know what it is like to be 80-years old, look at an 80-year old person. If you want to know what it is like to be a Baha’i, look at a Baha’i. If […]
The Dog
Of all the animals on Earth, I have learned most from the dog. Although my boyhood home was next door to a veterinarian, Doc Dapson in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, I never owned a dog until 1975 when we lived on a farm in Upstate New York. In his epic poetry, Homer tells us of Odysseus’s dog […]