Well, today is Christmas Eve. And this day always brings images of Mary and Joseph coming into the little town of Bethlehem looking for some place to lay their heads and for Mary to give birth to the child who would grow up to change the world forever, or at least as long as there are people here. It’s a beautiful story; it really is. I hope it’s true, or at least most of it. Of course there are a lot of historical problems with the story. And this all stems from the simple fact that the only sources we have for this story come from two of the gospels, Luke and Matthew. Mark and John...

Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are...

It must have been really hard for John the Baptist. The first we hear of him in any of the books after his birth is some thirty years later when he is out in the wilderness ranting and raving and calling for the people to repent, to change their way of seeing the divine. But something he said must have hit a chord within the people because they came. Maybe they came because they thought he was a little weird and they wanted to see the weird guy ranting and raving in the hair shirt eating the locusts with honey. But a lot of them stayed. So we can guess that a lot of those people felt the same emptiness...

The Advent season to all that believe in the story of Jesus is a very special time, not only as a celebration of the birth of a poor itinerant preacher from Nazareth. It is a celebration of hope. And the meaning of this celebration goes back far beyond the birth of Jesus. We all know that Jesus was most probably not born on December 25th, or anytime during the winter for that matter. It is fairly accepted by most scholars of church history that the holiday, or holy day, which celebrates his birth was selected arbitrarily to coincide with various holidays practiced by non-Christians during...

There was a time when it must have been incredibly difficult to understand anything you read because there was absolutely no punctuation in existence and nobody used capital letters either so that all the words just followed one after the other and the only way you could understand them was to put in the effort to try and figure out just what the writer was trying to say so you could make some sense out of that long string of letters in front of you. See what I mean? Without punctuation, writing is…well…pointless. That’s right; punctuation is a fairly new invention. Well, that’s...

The last time we went to Ireland, we spent a day taking a bus-tour of the Wicklow Mountains (such as they are. North Americans have to laugh a little at what the Irish call “mountains”.). We went through the village of Avoca where the BBC series, Ballykissangel was filmed, and then to the ancient monastic village established by Saint Kevin back in 540 CE called Glendaloch. The Village gets its name from the twin lakes less than a mile or so down the road from the village. Glendaloch is Gaelic for “two lakes”. The buildings there are simple, stone buildings, built to withstand the...

My wife and I went to a wedding on Saturday. The daughter of one of our best friends got married. We’ve known the bride ever since she was a baby. I can remember her when her mother held her in her arms. We have watcher her grow from a babe to a beautiful young…well…babe. And now, we watched her make the most important commitment of her life. One of our other best friends, an Irish Priest, came all the way from Ireland to perform the ceremony. It was just beautiful. But all this folksy crap has nothing to do with anything except that we went to a wedding. Whenever I go to a...

I once had a friend in high school and we were very close. We signed each other’s yearbooks “friends 4 ever!” We were both in music classes together. He was highly skilled at playing the piano. He had been playing since he was four years old. He could also play the organ quite well, and that’s a difficult instrument to play. He lived with his dad very close to the high school. His father was a tax accountant. Although, I was never invited to his house. I was too much of a hippy, and he didn’t think his dad would approve of me. He was also very religious. He went to church...

One of the things about what happens in the typical public school just bugs the hell out of me. You see, we have the best office staff you could possibly imagine. Without them, the school simply could not function. They type all the letters going home. They fill the supply orders. They translate things that need translating. They take care of sick kids who end up in the office when the nurse isn’t there. They keep an eye on the kids who are in the office for disciplinary reasons until the principal can see them. They field telephone calls from parents. They are simply the best. And yet,...

I think there is a reason why most churches are filled with old people. I don’t think it’s because old people are getting closer to death and are afraid of the great unknown. And I don’t think it’s because “the church” (whatever church or religion) has nothing to say to young people. I think it’s just because most young people are busy building their lives. They are going to school, getting jobs, finding true love–or at least a reasonable facsimile, having children, buying houses, cars, dogs, cats, lawnmowers and kitchen cabinets. When you’re driving the car, sometimes...