I  like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. –Mohandas Gandhi Ghandi’s rejection of Christianity grew out of an incident that happened when he was a young man practicing law in South Africa. He had become attracted to the Christian faith, had studied the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, and was seriously exploring becoming a Christian. And so he decided to attend a church service. As he came up the steps of the large church where he intended to go, a white South African elder of the church barred his way at the door. “Where do you...

Saint Francis de Assisi was born to Pietro di Bernardone, a rich cloth merchant. He had every advantage that one might expect of a young man born to a wealthy family in the Middle Ages. As a young man, Francis was a troubadour and wished to be a writer of French poetry. In 1201, he joined a military expedition against Perugia where he was taken as a prisoner and was not released for a year. A strange vision made him return to Assisi. He claimed to have had a mystical experience in the Church at San Damiano. Francis claimed to see the crucifix come to life and say, “Francis, Francis, go and...

One of the things I find truly astonishing about the human animal is the number of teachings and traditions that we have handed down time out of history for thousands of years from teacher to student, person to person. These are things that cannot be learned from books. You cannot learn to dance from a book. You cannot learn to play an instrument from a book. You cannot learn a martial art from a book. You cannot learn Zen from a book. If nothing else, you need a teacher in order to tell you if you’re getting it right or not, or, if you’re getting it wrong, what you must do to correct yourself....

I love art. I have to confess that I really know very little about it. That is, I only know what I have learned from my mother who took me to the art museum every Sunday when I was little, and from my various readings and interest. So I guess I know a little bit about art and art history, but not a lot. But, as the cliché goes, I know what I like. When I was first separated from my first wife, I used to like to go to an art gallery in a shopping mall near the bank where I worked. I liked to just walk through the gallery and look at the paintings for sale. They had paintings by Chagall and by Picasso,...

If the last ten years have taught me anything at all, it is the power of fear. After 9/11, our nation was turned upside down by fear. We went to war with a country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack over fear. If that fool, Bush was re-elected legally (of which I have some doubts), it was because of fear. We have handed over our civil liberties because of fear. Indeed, many of the problems we are facing in our economy have been caused by fear. Nobody is buying a house now because of the fear that house will lose value in the next few years, so the people who need to sell their houses...

*********LONG BLOG ALERT—SORRY EVERYBODY******* (I hope it’s worth it….) Charles Swindoll (not that you know who that is) tells a funny story about a nine-year-old named Danny who came bursting out of Sunday school like a crazy monkey. His eyes were darting in every direction as he tried to locate either mom or dad. Finally, after a quick search, he grabbed his Dad by the leg and yelled, “Man, that story of Moses and all those people crossing the Red Sea was great!” His father looked down, smiled, and asked the boy to tell him about it. “Well, the Israelites...

Of course all of you are too young to remember, but there was once a wonderful comedian by the name of Jack Benny. He made several films, including “The Importance of Being Earnest” (the Wilde play), had a regular radio show, and was able to make the leap to television. Jack Benny’s character was known for two things, playing the violin badly, and being cheap. One of the most famous of his radio bits involved Jack leaving the studio one night after the show. As he leaves the studio, a robber points a gun at him and says, “Your money or your life!” There was a long pause. The robber repeats,...

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...