This past Sunday Vin Scully, voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, age 88, retired after 67 years of calling Dodger games on radio and television. The same day, Tom Brokaw, famed NBC newsman, age 76, wrote a piece for the New York Times about living with cancer.

Scully entered the radio booth for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950. He moved to Los Angeles when the team moved west in 1958. I grew up in Southern California, and Vin Scully is how play-by-play has always sounded. Continue reading →

A few days ago I posted a social media meme promoting this coming Sunday evening’s “How Then, Shall We Vote?” gathering. I received some good feedback both online and off. One respondent asked, “Is that really a question?” In her mind it is not. She is pretty confident that her candidate is the only reasonable choice. Another, I think it was a way of saying, “I don’t walk to talk about it,” assured me that he would be voting his conscience.

I am not voting my conscience, and I’d like to talk about it. Continue reading →

I received a letter in the mail the other day. It was from the Society for Human Resource Management. It was their pleasure, they wrote, to inform me that I have been pre-approved to join their society as a professional member. They said that my commitment to successful HR practices at Langhorne Presbyterian Church qualifies me for this exclusive privilege. All I have to do is fill out a simple application and remit $175 by October 28. $195 after October 28.

I hope they are wrong. I hope they have me mistaken for someone else. They need to know that I have no commitment whatsoever to successful HR practices at Langhorne Presbyterian Church. I would be a disgrace to Society and all its other members.

I don’t need to wait until October 28. I’m not joining. Continue reading →

“So, tell me about your church?” He asked the question in the midst of small talk; we were just making conversation, but he seemed genuinely interested in hearing a little bit about LPC. However, our meeting would start soon and I did not want to impose too much on his kind interest in our church. I’d need to keep it short.

For years business people, sales reps, advocates for this cause or that, have used the phrase “elevator speech” to describe that short explanation of what we’re selling or doing, diligently working for or passionately believing in. What would you say about LPC if you had someone’s ear only for as long as it takes the elevator to get you to the seventh floor? Assuming a slow elevator and fairly fast talker, you have about 150 words. Continue reading →

By noon on September 11, 2001, we were just beginning to comprehend the magnitude of what had happened. We could not be certain if it was still happening or not. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital, Flight 93 in a field outside Shanksville, for those of us in Beaver, Pennsylvania, less than two hours away.

Jeff, the pastor at First Presbyterian Church, two blocks from our own Park Presbyterian Church, and I talked to each other, as good friends often do, and I can’t remember who said it first, but we knew, without much conversation, that the people of our churches and our little town needed to be together; to pray together and worship together, to come into the presence of God together. We would gather that night, that night of September 11, at Park Presbyterian because our sanctuary was the largest among all the churches. Continue reading →