Introduction             At the outset I will acknowledge that I began to explore this subject at the behest of David Johnson—a former student, a present university professor who is a gifted and published writer, and one of my most faithful readers—who frequently comments on my blogs and virtually always stretches my mind in the process….

Just to let you know that I haven’t forgotten, the promised upcoming blog that explores some of the elements and the practice of compromise is in process and will be posted within the next week or two. Meanwhile, I offer the following observations that have to do with a very common experience: and that is…

Those who have read the blog noted above—and those who choose to read or reread it—will note that the first “setback” to a sense of community that I chose to address was in the realm of religion. I confessed to some discomfort for “edging into the political world yet again” and spent some ink declaring…

It’s a bit of a crazy time to be posting this on the day after Christmas with the New Year approaching—better than Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, I suppose—but, since it’s the final installment, I’ll just put it “out there” for whenever you have nothing better to do. With apologies for that—as well as for…

An Unintended and Unexpected Prologue My intent was to complete these reflections about community and end on a positive note, but unfortunately, as you know, between the time I started writing and today, the Texas Attorney General brought to the Supreme Court a case for overturning/ invalidating the election results in 4 states that Biden…

In the spirit of full disclosure—and illustrative of the pervasiveness that this title suggests—in “a former life,” I first addressed this topic in a sermon in June of 1973, having gotten the idea from a sermon by Harry Emerson Fosdick in his anthology, Riverside Sermons, published in 1958, although the sermon originally appeared in an…

My previous post ended by bringing up a topic that I’ll call simply “shrinking time”—to be together with Cathy, my wife and best friend; shrinking time to be with my children and grandchildren; shrinking time to be with my three “oldest” friends as well as with all the friends that I value; shrinking time simply…

OK, so you read the title of this blog, and you said, “Huh?”  With good reason. There is hardly anything iconic about the number 84. Maybe if I were celebrating the halfway-in-between-85 or the decade-marking-90. But 84?  Who gives a yippa-dee-do-da?.  It’s just a yawn-inducing, mostly-unnoticed, rough-hewn steppingstone to actually attention-capturing numbers. Unless, of course,…

During the two-plus years since I started this blog, I’ve normally posted a new entry every ten days or so. However, it’s been almost a month since my last one, the result of my struggling with what felt like “writer’s block,” a truly new experience for me. So, I’ve been scratching my head and trying…

As it is often said these days, while there have been some periods in history that might border on the things we are experiencing, virtually none of us have lived through such a time as this—a global pandemic which has impacted the United States on a per capita basis more seriously than any other developed…