“A wise person should have money in his head but not in his heart.” Jonathan Swift One of the earliest scandals around insider trading involved Ivan Boesky. While many have forgotten him he lives on through the one quote attributed to him – and his being the basis for the character of Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) in the film, Wall Street: “Greed is good.” It was one of those unforgettable (and maybe unforgiveable) lines that summed up an era in one way but signaled the advent of another that was more irresponsible and harmful than even his own. In some ways Boesky was merely a precursor – or…

Over the last 30 years I have listened to parents wrestle with how best to pass wealth to their children. But the more complicated issue arises when they have to decide which of their children is most likely to handle the blessing well and not to be hobbled with an inheritance. What is fair? What is enough to express love but not spoil? Those who deserve the most are not always easy to discern. Take the case of the Levites. The people became impatient waiting for Moses to return from meeting with God on Mt. Sinai and created a golden calf to worship. After Moses discovered what they had done he shouted, “Whoever is for the Lord, come…

My mother died of Parkinson’s disease in 2004, and my father passed away in 2007. Neither of their deaths was sudden or tragic but the end of a long life for both. Friends told my siblings and me we would grieve in our own ways and there would be no predicting how our grief would show up or affect us. Of course, there are principles and common patterns of grief we can read about in books, but our friends were right. Each of us has worked through it in our own unique way. In letters and cards now from friends we hear often about the passing of parents so when I read this passage from Mary…

As some of you know, I enjoy taking pictures – and then finding something to say.

I love the martial arts choreography in movies like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I asked a black belt friend how he hardened his hands for real (not staged) competition. It seemed easy enough. Set up a five-gallon bucket of white rice and punch your hands in it 10-12 times in a row five times a day. When that no longer hurts use a five-gallon bucket of dry beans for several weeks and then graduate to five gallons of sand. While it takes time to become hardened it is a simple process. My martial arts friend cautioned me, “Be careful. The process is irreversible once the calluses are there…and you could really…

It’s Hard to Say It   Last week I was in Charleston, South Carolina, for the annual conference of The Philanthropy Roundtable. I was one of three speakers on a panel about “sunsetting,” the closing down of a private foundation. The audience was mostly family foundations working through whether or not to shutter their foundations and distribute the remaining assets after a period of time. Families choose to do this for any number of reasons but primarily out of concern that succeeding generations or future staff and trustees would not adhere to the founding donors’ intent. Of course, there are other considerations, but this is almost always what the discussion comes around to eventually. However, one of the questions was especially interesting to me as it was not…

Two devoted friends and brilliant minds — John Adams and Thomas Jefferson — fell out with each other over politics, personal slights and both feeling betrayed by the other. The feud not only embittered both, causing them to abandon all correspondence and relationship of any kind for many years, but it troubled their closest companions who could not imagine these giants of the Revolution becoming estranged for the rest of their lives. In 1809 a mutual signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush, had a dream about the two former presidents, wrote it down, and sent it to both men. In the dream he saw the alienated statesmen…

As a Baptist in Texas, I have often heard missions organizations promoting the urgency for church planting in areas of our country considered completely secular – cities with low church attendance and little visible Christian influence. Considered “hard soil” or “godless” or “lost territory”, cities like Boston, Portland, New York and Seattle have attracted waves of young planters sent by their home churches and denominations to re-evangelize these “foreign” places. I am reminded of a friend from Georgia who, upon returning from a trip to New England, told me there were no grocery stores in the entire region because she did not see a single Piggly Wiggly. We see what we expect…

It was 42 years ago when Carol and I last stood as a young and newly married couple with the people of Park Street Church in Boston and sang, “Our God Our Help in Ages Past” at the close of the service. Two Sundays ago, as visitors, we sang that hymn from the same hymnal. The congregation was thinned out and older than I remembered, but their voices were as strong and still filled the sanctuary as before as if those no longer there were joining in. Not ghosts or echoes but a great cloud of witnesses. As we sang I thought about that hymn (and others) as a metaphor for life. There is a story moving…

We all like backstories. I especially enjoy the stories behind songs. Did you know Paul McCartney’s original working title for “Yesterday” was “Scrambled Eggs”? Iron Butterfly’s  “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” was originally titled  “In The Garden of Eden,” but the lead singer was so inebriated he could not pronounce the words – so they left the title the only way he could say it. Recently, I read the backstory of Leonard Cohen’s song, “Hallelujah,” written and recorded in 1984. Not known as a devout person, it came as a surprise to everyone that Cohen showed up in the studio having written a lyric normally reserved for religious artists. Years later, he said that…