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February 17, 2023

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OK, try to picture this. Here's a group of maybe 100 teenagers in a seminar for two hours, sitting on concrete the whole time, taking notes the whole time, and asking for more when the seminar is dismissed. You say, "Whoa! What planet were you on?" It was in Haiti when I was there a few years ago, teaching in a workshop in the gymnasium. Now, the only place to sit was in the balcony, and in the balcony of that gym it was all concrete. They told me to take two hours. Wow! I said, "Oh, I could talk here all the time!" I could probably figure out something to say for two hours, and I did. Believe it or not, I was the first one finished! I know that's pretty hard for you to believe that I finished first, but I really did. Give me two hours and I can. Well, they quickly ran to the next seminar to get some more.

February 13, 2023

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I happen to be the only member of our family who will eat mincemeat pie. That's fine with me. Don't feel bad for me. Certain holiday seasons of the year, someone in the family will indulge me with my very own mincemeat pie. And it is my very own! Sharing is really not an issue here. Now, what I do since I don't get it very often is I try to make it last, because I don't get a lot, you know. So, I take these small slices over an extended period of time and it's great! Well, one problem: If I make it last too long, it starts to lose something. It's called freshness. A lot of times by the time I get to the end of that pie, I kind of wish I'd eaten it faster. See, that's the sad thing about a treat like that. It starts spoiling the minute it comes out of the oven really. Maybe I should eat the whole pie at one sitting. Actually, a lot of life's rewards are like that...I mean spoiling.

February 8, 2023

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It was a sight many of us never expected to see in our lifetime. Now I wish we could see it again. In the times we live in, we'd love to see something like this, except for what caused it. Here were the members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats standing together, singing "God Bless America" with all their hearts. What a moment!

January 25, 2023

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It may have been the most defining moment in a generation - the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Most of us were marked indelibly by just watching it on television. My friend Mark lived it. It was his first visit to New York, and his business took him high up in one of the Twin Towers. After the attacks, there was still great confusion as to whether to evacuate or stay in the building, Mark disregarded the announcement to "return to your office." That decision saved his life.

January 5, 2023

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In the movie Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks portrays this Army captain whose unit is assigned to find a private named Ryan in the dangerous aftermath of the D-Day Invasion. Ryan's brothers have both been killed in combat, and, unbeknownst to him, he is his mother's only surviving son. The mission involves the captain's unit in some brutal battles with the Germans. But Private Ryan is located and his life is saved by his captain who dies in the process. As Private Ryan attends to his mortally wounded rescuer, the captain speaks his last words in a hoarse whisper, "Earn this." The camera morphs from the young private's face to the face of an old man, standing by a white cross in the cemetery at Normandy. It is Ryan many years later, near the end of his life. He kneels by his captain's grave and he says, "Every day of my life, I've thought about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I've done my best. I hope at least in your eyes that I've lived up to all that you gave for me."

January 3, 2023

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It was one of those early spring days when we look out the window and see all kinds of beautiful birds. I saw this one that was actually pretty funny to watch. I'm not sure it was really funny for him. I think it was a bluebird and he was hovering near a rear window on our car, just fluttering back and forth, running into the glass over and over again. Now, he was obviously confused and disoriented. He was going nowhere, just fluttering, chattering, and crashing into the window. My wife said, "You know, I'll bet he sees himself in the glass, and that's what's got him acting crazy."

November 3, 2022

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Your first clue that something unusual ahead is a sign on the Interstate announcing what they call "the biggest cross in the Western Hemisphere." And, sure enough, as you approach that spot in Texas, you begin to see this huge white cross on the horizon. Actually, it doesn't look all that large from a distance. But then, as you drive that direction, it looks more and more impressive. Until you are coming up on it; (or especially when you do what I did), you stop and you stand at the foot of it - that cross is huge!

October 27, 2022

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Because I've had the wonderful opportunity to have a lot of Native American friends, and brothers and sisters, and be on many reservations with our On Eagles' Wings team, I've gotten to hear some of the very colorful ways that Native Americans express themselves. One of them I heard when we were with tribes in the Northeast. And it's really stuck with me, because it sounds like something Jesus said. They were talking about the choice historically that their people had to make between the world of the white people and the world of the Native people. And the elders would say, "No man can stand in two canoes." That's a pretty funny picture if you think about it. The guy trying to stand in two canoes as they drift apart. You know what? You had to choose your canoe.

October 21, 2022

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I knew about lighthouses. I never knew about lightships though, until I visited Nantucket, that charming old island that's about 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. In the harbor there. You now can tour the retired Lightship Nantucket. But before the development of modern navigational technology, the work of that ship actually saved a lot of lives. See, there are deadly shoals that extend south of Nantucket, and the main shipping lanes to New York City run right along the outer edge in what's called the Ambrose Channel. Now, for many decades, the Lightship Nantucket was stationed at the eastern approach to the channel - at what was called the "Times Square of the Atlantic." Well, she dared not leave her position there - because all ship navigation was fixed on that lightship. If the lightship moved, every ship would follow her - possibly to disaster.

September 28, 2022

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I think we all have awful memories of the painful scenes at Ground Zero in the rubble of the World Trade Center after September 11. I was kind of close to that because of our years in the New York area and even the people we knew in that building. And the firemen, policemen, emergency personnel, combing through the wreckage for their fallen brothers and sisters. You can remember. They would pause for a moment of silent tribute as the remains of one of them would be carried out. But at a time when there was talk of reducing the number of workers at the site, I saw a scene that was painful in a different way. Tempers flaring in the raw emotions of that moment, and some of those firefighters and police who had been fighting together to save or find people in the rescue and recovery effort were suddenly fighting with one another at Ground Zero.

                

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