To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Every set of Russian nesting dolls has an inside story. A matryoshka (the Russian word for “little mother,” pronounced Mah-TROESH- Kah) is a doll within a doll within a doll, each of them exquisitely hand-painted. Traditionally, the largest exterior doll is a Russian mother attired in a shapeless peasant jumper dress…. Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Looking for true stories of shootouts and showdowns, when six-guns at high noon served as arbiters of frontier justice? Your search will inevitably lead you to Deadwood, South Dakota, one of the roughest towns of the Old American West. In the latter decades of the 1800s, Deadwood seethed with gold prospectors,… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here In his book The Origin of Names, Words, and Everything in Between, Patrick Foote explores what he calls “historic titles.” Those would be descriptive names bestowed on certain individuals because of heroism – and on certain other individuals for, shall we say, less flattering reasons. Consider Alexander the Great. The Macedonian… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here When French general Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798, he brought along with his troops a crack team of 167 scientists and scholars. Napoleon was determined to plunder Egypt of its artistic treasures. Quite by accident, his team helped solve one of the enduring mysteries of the ancient world. A French soldier came upon a large… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here During any given Sunday morning worship service, the person with the best view in the house is the one standing in the pulpit. I’ve been entrusted with that view on a number of occasions. One can see, at a glance, an astonishing spectrum of humanity: young and old, eager and bored,… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Countless residents of planet Earth can’t imagine starting the day without a cup of coffee. What most people have never suspected is that coffee was once a serious spiritual issue within the Catholic Church. Around 600 years ago, a coffee craze swept the Middle East. Muslim mystics discovered that caffeine was an… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here It’s no surprise that Bible translators sometimes struggle. Their task is to take the words of ancient languages – Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic – and transform them into the everyday parlance of contemporary people living in entirely different cultures. For example, there’s the Karre language of equatorial Africa. How could the… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Fears are not created equal. A handful of phobias are so well known that their Greek designations effortlessly roll off our lips. There’s claustrophobia (the fear of closed-in spaces), xenophobia (anxiety around strangers), and arachnophobia (the conviction that spiders and people should not be required to share the same space). Other… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Tim Hansel loved to push his body to the limits. He went to Stanford University on a football scholarship in the 1960’s. After earning two degrees, he turned down an opportunity to join the coaching staff. His heart was set on more extreme challenges. Hansel felt most alive in the wilderness – especially… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here It’s not an exaggeration to say that Raymond Loewy invented American style. Most Americans have never even heard of the most influential industrial designer of the past 100 years. But all of us recognize his touch. He designed the iconic Coca-Cola fountain, the Lucky Strike package, the logos of Exxon, Shell,… Read more »
