There’s this man with whom I teach. I have to say that he can be a real pain in the ass. He’s not exactly what you would call a team player, so, from time to time, he makes it rather difficult to get things done. The truth is that the guy is a real iconoclast. He loves to piss people off. He refuses to teach using the same curriculum we are all supposed to use. He never disciplines his students and they get away with breaking myriad school rules in his class. As a result, other kids feel envious of his students because they get away with murder. On more than one occasion, various principals...

One of my fondest memories growing up as a child in my parents’ home was the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking every Thanksgiving and Christmas. My mother used to bake Peanut Butter, Oatmeal, and Chocolate Chip Tollhouse Cookies every holiday. The aroma used to invade my senses and lead me to the kitchen where the baking was underway. My mom always used to need to bake twice as many cookies as she wanted because my brother, my father, and I always consumed half of them before they could ever cool down. My mom’s cookies were the best. And there is a secret to good chocolate chip cookies....

I love seeing the world, but I hate to travel. It’s so stressful. I mean, you have to pack and make sure you haven’t forgotten anything. Then you have to get to the airport. And the airport is about the most stressful place you could want to be. You have to wait in one line after the other. They take your luggage and search it, so you hope to God there’s nothing in there that can get you into trouble because it seems like security keeps adding things to the “you better not take these things on the airplane if you know what’s good for you” list. Then you have to walk through that metal...

There is an old saying that we all know. You are what you eat. I never understood that statement, not really, until I had some health and nutrition classes in college. And even then it didn’t really hit me. It wasn’t until I started working out a lot that I came to understand that the food we eat is literally what makes our bodies. Our bodies renew themselves on the average of every seven years. In fact, certain tissues renew faster, and others a little slower. But the average is every seven years. That means that the you that exists now is not the same you that existed seven years...

Anybody who has ever been to a sporting event or seen one on television as seen some fool holding up a sign that said, “John 3:16″ I saw this sign a number of times before I finally went and looked it up to see just what it says in John, chapter 3, verse 16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” That’s what John 3:16 says. And I’ve heard that verse over and over during my life, but I never gave it a lot of thought mostly because of the context in which I heard...

Everybody likes a good party. I know I do. I don’t go to nearly enough. Let’s face it. People just love to celebrate. Just about every culture I know has some kind of harvest festival, a way to celebrate the gathering of food. And that carries over even to modern times. I know that it has always been a habit for me, and just about everybody I know, to go out to dinner, or do something to celebrate payday. At our school, we nearly always have a TGIF celebration at a local restaurant/bar on payday. And isn’t payday really our urban version of a harvest? We celebrate births, weddings, birthdays,...

Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, “Do you want to go to heaven?” The man said, “I do Father.” The priest said, “Then stand over there against the wall.” Then the priest asked the second man, “Do you want to go to heaven?” “Certainly, Father,” was the man’s reply. “Then stand over there against the wall,” said the priest. Then Father Murphy walked up to O’Toole and said, “Do you want to go to heaven?” O’Toole said, “No, I don’t Father.” The priest said, “I don’t believe this. You mean to tell me that when you...

I once went to a funeral for a woman who worked at our church. Rosemarie Kelley passed away quite suddenly.  Her death took us all by surprise.   She was one of those people you don’t always think about, just one of those people who is always there. And you don’t really notice just how important they are until they are gone. Rosemarie was one of those people who did just about everything around the church. When something needed doing, it was usually Rosemarie that did it. The church was absolutely packed. It was standing room only, the kind of crowd you generally only see at Christmas and...

Well, Saturday came and went and the faithful are still here.  The Apocalypse did not come to pass.  And all around the country, people are having a good bit of fun at the expense of those who chose to believe the message that Family Radio spent millions of dollars proclaiming.  A certain amount of laughter is understandable.  Certainly, the idea that we can know when the end of time is coming is not a gospel idea.  Jesus said that he would return like a “thief in the night.”  He also said no one knew the time of his return but the Father. Still, the fact that a great many people believed...

I love a good story, don’t you? I guess everybody does. That’s why I am captivated by the gospels. The story of Jesus is such a good story. It is slightly different in each of the gospels, and each one has its own special charm. People so often read those stories and never think of them as such, as a story. Whether or not you believe what is written there or not, it is still a great story. I seldom meet people who look at what is written in the gospels as a story. People are usually too busy taking everything written there as sacred text and as such, seem afraid to enjoy it, as if enjoying...