Here’s a pitch for my novel, Faith, Hope, and Baseball: A Novel: What would you sacrifice to save everything you love? 17 yr-old Jason loves God, his widowed mother, his girlfriend & his Amish life. But bills are mounting & an offer to play professional baseball promises financial freedom. His choice will change his life forever. In this excerpt, the Chicago Cubs coach is contemplating God, and the faith of the 17 year-0ld baseball phenomenon he’s trying to recruit to... Read more
As millions of Christians enter the Lenten Season and observe one of the oldest traditions in the Church calendar, the season reminds Christians to: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.” — Genesis 3:19 The Lenten Season is the 40 days prior to Easter, not including Sundays. It ends April 17. In many faith traditions, ashes are viewed as a symbol of penance, and Ash Wednesday ashes help us be more humble and sacrificial in spirit.... Read more
Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash, Feb. 3, 1959, immortalized in Don McLean’s “American Pie.” Buddy was 22, Ritchie was 17, and Jay P. Richardson was 28. Pilot Roger Peterson was 21. Rock and roll belongs to the young. The Beech-Craft Bonanza crashed in the early morning hours of Feb. 3. Disoriented by the darkness and snow, Peterson evidently flew the aircraft directly into the snow-covered ground. The night before, they played at... Read more
Thomas Merton Jan. 31, 1915 — Dec. 10, 1968 https://twitter.com/Faithonthe/status/1091174715044085760 https://www.facebook.com/FaithOnTheFringe/photos/a.1465149670372450/1957839001103512/?type=3&theater Read more
Writing is difficult. Despite that, I have written professionally my entire career. I wrote newspaper and magazine articles in college and a few weeks after graduation got a job as a newspaper reporter. After that, I was a newspaper editor and reporter. As a radio reporter I wrote news stories and did the news broadcast every hour. I’ve written freelance articles, releases, radio and television commercials, scripts, and speeches. I wrote and published a couple of books and wrote and... Read more
Martin Luther King Jr.: The Man and His God This eBook traces King’s life from his early days, to his last hours. I wrote this 21-page eBook while in seminary. I wrote, edited, and rewrote the same paper for three classes. One professor said this was the best paper he’d ever read about Martin Luther King, Jr. Illustrated with historic images, Martin Luther King Jr.: The Man and His God is an academic yet accessible introduction to one of the most... Read more
“The past is never dead,” wrote William Faulkner, in Requiem for a Nun. “It’s not even past.” That’s especially true in the Unites States when dealing with issues of race. Racism, prejudice, and bigotry are as American as red, white, and blue. Racists are rampant, in part because they grew up in a racist, segregated society. Prejudice is prevalent among people of a certain age. And among some of their children. And in their politics and assumptions and their laws,... Read more
In the coming year, will you look back towards the past, or towards the future? Will you stop thinking about the “might have been” and the “never was,” and set your course towards what will be? It’s easy to get caught up looking backwards when we ought to look forward. The Roman god Janus was the god of gates, halls, doors, and doorways. The god of beginnings and endings. Usually depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions, Janus frequently... Read more
The house with the most Christmas lights in my neighborhood had the decorations down by Dec. 30. It perfectly represented Christmas in popular culture. Christmas Day, Dec. 25, is the day Christianity shakes free of the cultural Christmas and begins the Christian season of Christmastide. The popular 12 Days of Christmas aren’t the days before Christmas, they are the days after. They are a daily reminder of the presence of God. They begin Christmas Day and end with Twelfth Night, the... Read more
In the African American community, Watch Night services on New Year’s Eve commemorate the evening of Dec. 31, 1862, as black people, both enslaved and free, looked to Jan. 1, 1863, and the implementation of the Emancipation Proclamation. The idea of a New Year’s Eve service actually is much older than Freedom’s Eve of Watch Night, and in fact finds its roots in the Moravian Church and a 1733 New Year’s Eve service held in Germany. Always one to adopt... Read more
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