Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century English preacher, once used the following wonderful story. It seems a particularly loud-mouthed know-it-all boarded a ship. After a few days at sea with the obnoxious one telling everyone, even the captain, what to do, a severe storm arose. ...
One evening when my boys were teens, three of us were watching one of them play floor hockey in our college gym. I never did see what precipitated the fight but the one playing hockey was into it with another player. I could not believe...
New England is deep into summer. The greens have lost their newness and have darkened into a lush verdancy. Roadsides are strewn with Queen Ann's Lace and Daylilies. Purple Loosestrife has filled the wetlands along the edges of the rivers and marshlands. Evening shadows lengthen...
People-watching far exceeds bird-watching as a source of fascination. Don’t get me wrong. Bird-watching is great fun; it’s just that it is far exceeded by the fun of people-watching. My favorite sighting for the day was at Taco Bell. There was this old guy (That...
It's eight o'clock in the evening here in Massachusetts. It's July and it is eighty degrees. There is no breeze. Leaves are hanging still. Sunflowers are starting to lose their vibrancy because it has been many days since we had any serious rain that would...
There are Oreo cookies, peanut butter cookies and sugar cookies, but yesterday we had amazing cookies. Chocolate chips held together by the best cookie dough in the world. They were Goldilocks cookies; baked not too little and not too long. They were baked JUST right. ...
There is something indescribably delicious about a hot muggy summer afternoon that slowly transitions when a thunderstorm cools off the day. Maples leaves, bigger than oak and birch leaves, are the first to catch the approaching zephyr. Glancing up one notices a slight graying of...
We have a grandson and a granddaughter staying with us for three weeks and I am enjoying the grandfather thing. This evening while my wife was teachingI was in charge. It's hot and muggy so I took them to an air-conditioned bookstore. It was most...
It was a classic July day in Massachusetts. Hot, humid and muggy. All one needed to do to work up a sweat was lift a bottle of cold root beer to one’s parched lips. Even the flies were perched and panting instead of pestering. A...
It is not often while visiting someone I keep changing chairs. Actually, it only happened once. The home, where I was making a pastoral visit, reeked with the smell of cats. My nostrils were assaulted the moment the door was opened to welcome me inside. ...