Last month while I was in California, my sister gave me a file folder stuffed full mostly of letters from the past 45 or more years.  It was my mother’s “Bill” folder – my sister has been the guardian of such things since my mother’s death two years ago.  It was a heavy-duty folder recycled from my father’s business. The last additions to the collection are mostly printed emails, but the early items are almost all hand written. They are my letters home. Or at least some of my letters home.  I am not sure of the criteria by which some letters were saved and others not. I suspect there were no criteria.  This letter was save and that one was not.

The oldest letter in the lot was written a week into the first quarter of my freshman year in college. It is among a couple dozen written during those four undergrad years. Continue reading →

The sign at the entrance to the Friends Cemetery near the Meeting House on Maple Avenue asks us to curb our dogs out of respect for those buried there. I appreciate the sentiment, but the dead don’t care.

Now, I think it’s best that we not allow our dogs to run among the graves, leap and catch Frisbees over the top of memorial stones, or do those other things dogs are prone to do when they’re running free.  Out of respect for the grieving who may have come to remember a loved one – out of respect for the memory of those buried in the graveyard – it’s best that we curb our dogs.  But the dead themselves?  They don’t care. Continue reading →

There’s a hole in the middle of the street, and I keep hitting it.  Of course, it is pothole season, but this is not so much a pothole as a mini sinkhole.  You may have hit it driving south on Bellevue half way between the Bella Tori and the church.  You can’t miss the thud.

So, I hit the sinkhole on the way to church, get to church and get busy, and not think about it until I hit it again the next time I am out. I don’t know how many thuds it took before I remembered to steer clear of the mini-sinkhole.  The car will probably need a frontend alignment pretty soon.

We hit potholes and sinkholes on our journeys through life, and sometimes it takes way too many thuds before we learn to steer clear of them. Continue reading →

A true story. Names and other details altered slightly.

The request came Sunday afternoon from Ted’s brother who lives in another state.  I did not know Ted or his brother. Would I please visit Ted who had been admitted to the hospital on Saturday and was facing a very serious diagnosis?  The brother and I had a further conversation on Monday and I went to see Ted on Tuesday.

You never know what you might face in a hospital cold call, but I liked Ted almost instantly and, yes, though never much of a church goer, he was happy to talk with a pastor. Ted had not made any room for church and not much room for God in his life because it hadn’t seemed as if there was much need for God or any need for the church.  Saturday had changed everything. Continue reading →

I’m just back from a study leave trip to California. I couldn’t have asked for a better trip, though there was the matter of both the flight from Philadelphia to San Francisco and the flight from San Francisco to Philadelphia being delayed by mechanical issues on the planes.  The outbound flight was flight was two and a half hours late because the original and the replacement plane required repairs of some sort. The passengers never knew exactly what that was all about.

The return trip left San Francisco 90 minutes late because of a missing screw somewhere on the tail rudder.  Apparently the repair took about 20 minutes and the paperwork to document the repair took over and hour to prepare and file.  The passengers were told all about it.

It is a tale of two pilots. Continue reading →