The song is so old that you cannot find the lyrics online, but in 1965 “Spider John” Koerner wrote and recorded Rent Party Rag on his first solo album. The gist of it was a story about what to do when you don’t have enough money to pay the rent. You get a barrel of beer, lots of food and some music. You tell the musicians, “I’m gonna feed you and let you drink for nothin’ and then you are “jumpin’ til the break of dawn.” You charge everyone a little to come and you have enough left over to pay your rent for the month. So simple! I’ve been…

The Kentucky River winds past Port Royal in Henry County and Wendell’s farm before it empties into the Ohio River below Cincinnati where I grew up. It was downstream in my life when I was first introduced to Wendell’s work and without our ever meeting in person his work has been a part of my life and work ever since.  All of us have origins or we can call them headwaters. We come from someplace. We have a place of beginning. It may be a spot on a map or something that from the start has defined the way we look at life. I think Wendell’s headwater is love. Not…

  To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson the Philosophy Department of Harvard University commissioned a new campus building for the Departments of Philosophy and Psychology. In December 1905, it was officially opened with the esteemed member of the psychology department, William James, speaking. The professors of philosophy had determined the engraved stone inscription at the top of the building was to be, “Man Is The Measure of All Things” as that would have been appropriate for such an honor. While it would be difficult to neatly summarize the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, those words certainly reflected his own philosophy. In his lecture titled…

Imagine a see-saw with two children on either end. If equally matched everything goes smoothly. However, if one is bigger than the other it is hard work to keep the rhythm of back and forth. There is always an imbalance between them. In a 1924 article in the Atlantic Monthly, Lord Moulton wrote about the see-saw effect in the norms of a society. He titled it “Obedience to the Unenforceable.” Just like our see-saw there are two opposite forces acting on a society. One is complete Law where our every action is prescribed by binding rules which must be obeyed. On the opposite end is the force of total Free…

A column by David Brooks, “The Life Reports,” included this line: “‎Resilience is a major theme…I don’t think we remind young people enough that life is hard.”  The purpose of the column was to report on the thousands of responses he had received to his request for readers over 70 to send him “Life Reports” or little essays in which they evaluate their own lives. In reading them he discovered how many of them had difficult lives and one of his conclusions was the above quote.  Our young people need to be reminded more than they are about the inevitable difficulties of life for which they may not be prepared. …

“By then day had broken everywhere, but here it was still night – no, more than night.”                                  Pliny theYounger   Years ago, while serving as a counselor at youth crusades, we were trained to hand each person making a decision for Christ a pocket version of the Gospel of John. Why? Because our leaders thought it captured the love of God better than any of the other Gospels. The stories of the Samaritan woman at the well, Nicodemus, the blind beggar healed, the feeding of the five thousand, and the raising of Lazarus – as well as what may be the most famous verse in the Bible – were…

Everyone likes a mystery, especially one about the rich. My interest was piqued while reading an article by Drew Lindsay in the “Chronicle of Philanthropy.” The article’s subject is David Gundlach, the enigmatic donor who left close to $150 million to his hometown’s community foundation in Elkhart, Indiana. I began to read articles about his life – what little was known about it. In fact, it is less of a true mystery than it is a story of an unfinished quest in the life of a boy from a small town becoming rich after the sale of his company. This line from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” reminds me…

The earliest Church faced opposition from hundreds of other cults and religions. But some of the stiffest competition came from within the groups of believers themselves. You may remember Paul’s first visit to Ephesus where he discovered many were followers of the baptism of John but had heard nothing about the Holy Spirit. Paul didn’t criticize or make them feel less than Christian. He simply took them from where they were to the next step.   It is too easy to fall into the habit of discounting efforts for leading people to Christ if what they encounter first seems incomplete or superficial. I know that is the way I have…

In the years between 1845 -1849, Ireland suffered one of the most destructive famines in history. Known as The Great Hunger, over 1 million people died by mass starvation and another million or more emigrated (and often perished) in “coffin ships” to other countries. Ireland lost almost 25 percent of its population and even now has never fully recovered. Every area – economic, demographic, political and religious – was affected by the famine. Like those experiencing famines in the Old Testament, the axis of their lives was violently tilted and they did whatever was needed to survive. In the book of Amos, the prophet is told Israel will suffer a…

My father had the best definition of leadership I know: “Look back and if there are people following you then you are a leader.” All of us have known people who are leaders without having read a book or taken a course in leadership. People follow them when they say they are going somewhere. In spite of fears and hesitations they get up from what they are doing and go. Some people are born with the ability to say, “Let’s go, guys” and people fall in.  The word for that in Greek is dierchomai and it describes the way Jesus led the disciples much of the time. Just when they…