text “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” Week after week the old man complained to God every Sunday morning in church,…
text "Have you anything to eat?" At first the cardboard sign was hard to read, but as the old lady came closer…
text "Do you have anything to hang onto besides your doubt?" The odyssey of every human life brings with it both joy and sorrow, hope and…
text "The great gift of Easter is hope." 'Waiting in the wings to go on stage' was the image that came to mind as I…
text "Mom, who's the guy on the donkey?" The reenactment of Jesus' triumphant entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday…
text "The only thing I'd like to do is to be able to go out one day without anyone recognizing me..." The end of Lent is foreseeable and the penitential deprivations that we might…
text "There is none so blind as the one who will not see." Entering the Fourth Sunday of Lent, traditionally known as "Laetare Sunday" …
text "Faith is the absence of proof." Mel Brooks, who wrote, produced, directed and starred in the 1981 comedy film…
text "Pay attention to the voice behind the curtain." There is a wonderful scene in the film, The Wizard of Oz, where Toto, Dorothy…
text "What floats your boat?" Good question, I thought, as I stared at the bumper sticker on the boat…
text "What are friends for?" I don't recall when I first heard the phrase, "What are friends for?" …
text "It's been a hard day's night, and I've been working like a dog." Coming home very late from a hospital call, I was listening on the car radio…
text "I hear you knocking, but you can't come in." Once the rhythm and blues song, "I Hear You Knocking, But You Can't Come In",…
text "What a friend we have in Jesus." Some years ago, when I was teaching in Dubuque, Iowa, I was invited to a Hymn…
text "As we look back at those who have gone before us, what do we find?" n you take." It was two days before Christmas eve that I reached up to the top shelf in the…
text "Always give more than you take." Reading the daily obituaries always gives me a new lease on life. A firm…
text If you want the unlikeliest of answers, then listen to the unexpected questions. In the words of the poet Mary Oliver, "Poetry is a life-giving force. For…
text "Lift up your eyes Upon this day breaking for you. Give birth again to the dream." The inevitable synchronicity of the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and…
text "One world at a time." Henry David Thoreau, the great American naturalist, poet and transcendentalist…
text "I wait with quickened hope for crooked paths to straighten." Generations of the family gathered around the bed as I prepared to administer…
text "Who lives on the outskirts of the kingdom?" The feast of Christ the King signals the end of Ordinary Time and the…
text "Still, I put up with this Church until I see a better one; and she must put up with me... The sixteenth century Christian humanist and scholar Erasmus (died 1536) had,…
text "Vocatus Atque Non Vocatus, Deus Aderit."              …
text "Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." The final leg of the journey would take me through O'Hare Airport in Chicago…
