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I'm an Army brat, the proud son of a proud veteran who completed four tours of duty in two separate conflicts. I am immensely grateful that my father always returned home, at least physically. My mother was never forced to grieve at her husband's graveside, but there is more than one way for a soldier to die. Often the man who comes home is not the same man who left for war. I remember my mother's stories of how his…

The highest possible standard of a nation is justice. That is quite a high standard, not always reached by a nation, even ours. How does a country like the United States of America exhibit that highest possible calling? ... In the first place, I think our country should exhibit a constant and clear commitment to peace. Not only peace between ourselves and our potential adversaries ... we should use our powerful influence to resolve existing disputes among other people peacefully...…

The lap pool--wide at both ends to allow for volleyball nets--was sixty feet long. The middle part narrowed into a dangerous Dardanelles where he had to be careful to follow the tile markers on the bottom of the pool if he didn't want to smash his hands into the sides. He moved fairly fast, swimming with a modified butterfly stroke that allowed his body to stay in the water. It took him forty-five minutes to swim eighty lengths, the desired…

I should keep a Sunday journal, a place not so much for sermon outlines as for the ideas they have generated. It strikes me now that the best ideas I've had--too many quickly lost again--have come through agreement or disagreement with what I've heard when stationed in the pew. I'm reminded of poet Wendell Berry, who took many Sunday walks on his back forty before he had the sense to write a book of poems called Sabbaths. I don't think…

The Pump at the End of the Lane I remember the sound of the pump at the end of our cottage lane braying like a donkey singing like an old man who knows only two notes We would pump & pump until rewarded with the gush we knew would come because it always did four kids taking turns cupping hands while another worked the lever filling our throats with icy pangs of pleasure splashing each other & running from getting…

>"Establish the work of our hands for us--yes, establish the work of our hands." --Psalm 90:17b The heat waves this summer reminded me of a particularly dreadful spell of hot weather in the summer of 1995. In Chicago that year, scores of people died of the excessive heat, with most victims being the homeless as well as the elderly who lived in squalid apartments without adequate ventilation. An even more tragic dimension to this was revealed six weeks later when…