“Always Let Your Conscience be Your Guide,” Jiminy Cricket tells Pinocchio in the Walt Disney version of the children’s classic. I can’t speak for Pinocchio, but my conscience can be a pretty lousy guide as it leads me not to being a real boy or a better person but to chasms of guilt and swamps of discouragement.

A couple of weeks ago I had what might be called a difficult conversation with a colleague. I challenged him regarding attitude and behavior that I and others in our organization were finding harmful to relationships and to our common work. Prior to the conversation I sought the advice of some wise counselors who were familiar with the situation and who know me well.  They deemed the conversation difficult, but necessary.

I don’t like difficult conversations and tend to steer clear of them until I have exhausted all avenues of avoidance. But sometimes you can no longer postpone the inevitable. Continue reading →

The first snowfall of the season was larger than expected. The total for Sunday and Monday at our house was around four inches, enough to blanket the ground and stick to the roads and sidewalks. Enough to shovel before church on Sunday morning, at that point a wet and heavy slush of a snowfall.

The early snowfall caught us a bit off guard. We have yet to winterize the screen porch, and it’s still too cold to get the work done. We weren’t ready, not quite prepared for four inches of snow the second week of November. This is January stuff. Continue reading →

I have written before about my early morning routine of running the streets of our subdivision. That routine includes running each of the nine cul-de-sacs in the development. Adding the cul-de-sacs to my route ensures enough distance to meet my mileage goal. Miss a cul-de-sac, miss the satisfaction of having accomplished my goal.

My service to our presbytery has recently taken a busy turn with significant business before a couple of the committees with which I am involved. The issues are complex and take not only too many Zoom calls, emails, text messages, and telephone conversations, but a lot of thinking time to process new information and formulate next moves. What better thinking time than the morning run?

So intense has been my thinking, though, that I sometimes end my morning run wondering – and certainly not remembering – if I made all the turns onto cul-de-sacs that my routine requires. Was I so lost in thought that I simply kept running instead of making that left or right turn onto Ursa Cove or left turn onto Bruin Pass? Okay, the time I was out running indicates the mileage was accomplished. I guess autopilot worked. Continue reading →

My cynicism can too often get the better of me.  I should not have clicked on the recent Guardian article with its headline “An ex-Intel CEO’s mission to build a Christian AI: ‘hasten the coming of Christ’s return’.”

I did not expect a Christian-friendly article from the Guardian, but they played it fairly straight with very little sarcasm or disparagement. My eyes did roll, however, when I read this quote from the tech CEO: “My life mission has been [to] work on a piece of technology that would improve the quality of life of every human on the planet and hasten the coming of Christ’s return.”

Forcing Jesus’ hand on the whole second coming thing has been a part of Christian lore for generations and is a key doctrine among some American Evangelicals. In Mark 13, Jesus is talking with his disciples about the end times and his coming to gather the elect unto himself. The key “force his hand” verse is Mark 13:10, “And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations” (ESV) where a simple indicative becomes a condition. “If the gospel is proclaimed to all nations, then Jesus must come.” Continue reading →

Becky and I have been home from our trip to Brazil for nearly a week now. Things are falling back into our normal routine and fewer Portuguese phrases are coming to mind when we are out and about.

But what a trip it was. Thank you to those of you who commented on our photos posted on social media and here at “Observations” (email version) the past two Fridays.

It was, as I suggested before we left, a tale of two trips. The first trip took us to the breathtaking beauty of Iguaçu Falls in southern Brazil (with a couple of side trips into Argentina), and the second trip took us to the neighborhoods of Jardim América, Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil, where we have spent so many days over the past 25 years. Continue reading →