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At the beginning of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he says: By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ I appeal to all of you, my friends, to agree in what you say, so that there will be no divisions among you. Be completely united, with only one thought and one purpose. For some…
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I know that nobody thinks of “Wall Street” as a Christmas movie, but hear me out. When April and I were in college, on weekends they would show a late-night movie on campus, as something to do for those who didn’t have cars and didn’t want to go to frat parties. By the time we…
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So apparently mountaineers encounter this challenge of false summits. They think they’re climbing to the summit of a mountain, and when they break through the clouds to get to the top of where they are climbing, they realize that it’s not really the highest point. The next thing over is taller. (Sometimes, apparently, this can…
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What if there are no bad guys? We judge other people’s intentions by their actions, and we judge our actions by our intentions. Stephen M. R. Covey (the son of the “7 habits” guy) taught me that in his book “The Speed of Trust,” which anyone who works on my team is sick of hearing…
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Sometimes I think that my faith is like a game of Jenga. A piece disappears, and I wonder, “Is that one going to make it all come crashing down?” We spend a lot of time covering for God. I don’t think He needs it, and I think we do more harm than good in trying…
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When Jim Valvano coached basketball at NC State, he asked a referee once, “Can you T me up [give me a technical foul] for what I think?” “No, Jimmy,” the ref answered, “I can’t T you up for what you think.” “Well I think you suck,” Valvano retorted. I was thinking about how we get…
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Here’s another way I side with the Pharisees, and a major reason John is my least favorite gospel. Again thanks to Fr. Raymond E. Brown’s commentary, I now realize that John, like the other gospel writers, uses parables. But where the authors of Matthew, Mark and Luke start theirs with Jesus saying, “The kingdom of…
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“They understood the assignment.” That’s been a popular phrase lately. I noticed it in social media posts about celebrities at the Met Gala who showed up in sufficiently avant-garde fashion choices, but I’m sure it long predates that (and will soon be passé). It calls to mind the kid who shows up to class having…
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OK so let me tell you about my favorite saint-on-the-way, Father Pedro Arrupe, SJ. Betsy found out that she had been accepted to LMU and awarded the Pedro Arrupe Scholarship on the same day that the “Saint of the Day” in my go-to devotional, Give Us This Day was Pedro Arrupe. A few weeks later,…
