Today is Palm Sunday. It is the beginning of what Roman Catholics and most other Christians as well, refer to as “Holy Week”. Each day of this week has some significance. It begins with Palm Sunday. Then follows Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, culminating with Easter Sunday. This weeks marks when Jesus came into Jerusalem ending with his crucifixion and resurrection. The event commemorated on Palm Sunday is told in all four gospels (Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, John 12). The Matthew narrative, the one most commonly read in services on Palm Sunday, tells the...

After all you’ve been given Ain’t it time to give some back This life you’re livin’ Is seriously off track You think you understand You may think you really know But when it comes to understanding God You got a long long way to go Standing on the corner Begging for a buck Stands a lonely beggar A little down upon his luck Not the kind of guy you or I might want to see What you do to the least of these You do to me Blessed are the poor in spirit They shall have their fill People do not understand I guess they never will Give us this day, our daily bread And shield...

I used to spend a lot of my time being pissed off. And, before I venture further, I would like to address the dangling preposition in the previous sentence. Once upon a time, it was the mark of the poorly educated to end a sentence with a preposition. It just wasn’t done. Modern Grammarians (those people from Grammaria), realizing that language changes, have begun to allow this to some degree. There are others, who refuse to surrender to this new fangled allowance, and prefer to create hopelessly convoluted awkward sentences in order to avoid using a preposition with which to end...

Back in July of 2003, 86 year-old George Weller of Santa Monica was driving his 1992 Buick La Sabre down the streets of his city when he turned his car mistakenly down a street where a farmer’s market was being held. He was taken by surprise. He wasn’t expecting an open-air market to be there. He went to step on the brakes, but his foot his the gas instead. A few moments later nine people were dead. Weller was arrested and charged with manslaughter. People were calling for him to be locked up in prison. I am not going to get into whether or not senior citizens should be allowed to drive...

I can remember many years ago, lying in my bed in a great deal of pain. I had hurt my back. I had two herniated discs. Now for those of you who don’t know exactly what that means, it means that the gelatinous material that exists between two of my vertebrae had been punctured and was leaking out and making contact with the nerves that run through the center of the spinal column. Chiropractors refer to these as slipped discs, which calls to mind an image, which is somewhat less than accurate. A “slipped disc” makes you think of discs out of alignment. This is not the case. Imagine...

I once had a very good and close friend who I felt had betrayed me. I won’t get into all the particulars. Let me just say that for some time we were no longer in contact with each other. And for a good long time we didn’t really speak or communicate in any way. It’s an old story. I hear it all the time from other people too. I know people who’ve had conflicts with people whom they loved very much, and very suddenly, the relationship was over. There were hard feelings. There were harsh words said. There were feelings of hurt and betrayal. And whenever I hear those...

It is very difficult to explain to anybody born after 1955 or so exactly what was so special about the Beatles. I know that a lot of younger people have listened to Beatles music and appreciate how good it is. I’ve heard young people say how Beatles music makes them feel good inside. Some young performers have even been strongly influenced by the music of the Beatles. And of course, it’s a little hard to explain exactly why everybody went nuts every time they performed. I’m sure you’ve all heard that the screams were so loud that the Beatles themselves could not hear what...