The creation of wealth often spurs an unexpected reaction in the next generation. During the 12th and early 13th centuries there was something of an explosion of both wealth and the formation of informal orders within the Catholic Church. One of the reasons for the founding of these monastic communities was that a generation of young people were turning away from the excesses of their wealthy parents. The son of one of those nouveau riche, Francis of Assisi, was raised as a spoiled and privileged young man. Imprisoned for a year for being on the losing side of a war with a rival city, his friends noticed a change. He found a little abandoned…

Is God Out to Lunch? Toward the end of Bryan Stevenson’s book, Just Mercy, he writes of a time at the close of a difficult case that he returns to his law office discouraged and wearied by the fight for justice for a wrongly condemned person facing execution: “The lack of compassion I witnessed every day had finally exhausted me. I looked around my crowded office, at the stacks of the records and papers, each filled with tragic stories, and I suddenly didn’t want to be surrounded by all this anguish and misery. As I sat there, I thought myself a fool for having tried to fix situations that were…

I turned 70 in July – as did 3 million others born in 1946. That means I can start collecting all the good stuff owed to me – like deeper senior discounts, Medicare, full Social Security benefits, people giving me their seats on the subway and getting my luggage into the overhead bins on planes. I’m the stereotypical Boomer in that I demonstrated against the Vietnam war (my draft number was actually #1), grew my hair long, owned and operated a coffee house for a short time, and demanded everything in my world be changed to accommodate me. I was strident, spoiled, obnoxious and shouted more than I listened. Every…

Early on the morning of July 15, 2005, a young man stepped over the guard rail and stood on the edge of the Cold Spring Bridge in Santa Barbara, California. He was spotted by Ken Rushing, a local deputy sheriff. Ken said at the time, “He gave me a thousand-mile stare. He basically looked right through me.” And then the young man leaned back and just faded away into the fog-cloaked gorge below. Andrew Popp was a 6’9″ basketball and volleyball star who had recently graduated from San Marcos High School. He was a fine athlete and excellent student. Prominent universities were pursuing him, and his future was, seemingly, bright. His…

Every creative person I know has something we call “the inner critic.” It is that voice inside your head that sabotages and undermines all your efforts with questions and demands like, “You are stupid. No one cares about this. You will fail so why try?” The inner critic is not the same thing as an overactive conscience. It is not even a moral guide. What most distinguishes the inner voice from a conscience or guide is its degrading, punishing quality. Its demeaning tone tends to increase our feelings of self-hatred instead of motivating us to change undesirable actions in a constructive manner. It is the part of us that is turned…

When our daughter, Haley, decided to drive from her home in Hollywood back to Texas for a visit, I asked her if I could fly out and then come along on the road trip. Yes, I was concerned about her being alone in the desert with a high-mileage, 10-year-old car, but I was equally enthusiastic about traveling the route itself.

If all I knew about my grandfather was what I read in his 1952 diary I might think he was a man whose life was a monotonous string of colorless days. My grandfather, Bunyan Smith, was a pastor in one of the poorest sections of Nashville, and I knew enough about his life as a preacher to expect that his diary would not likely be thrilling. However, I was completely unprepared for how unremarkable it would be. His first entry on January 1 begins with, “Up about 7:00 a.m. Family worship at breakfast. Dressed for the day. Went to church to pray. Studied. Visited the sick. Wrote letters. Ate supper. Retired.” His…

My father left me three watches as part of my inheritance. The first, and oldest, was the one his parents had given him as a graduation present from high school in 1932. The second was a watch he bought when he left his corporate career and went into business for himself as a consultant. The third was a Rolex he bought and wore for almost 40 years. While I never asked him directly, I think that last watch signified something important to him as a child of the Depression. It was not pride but a marker of having made something of himself. It is also the watch I remember the…

The most memorable line President Obama spoke about his recent meeting with Raul Castro was, “The United States will not be imprisoned by the past.” I have thought a lot about that over the last few months, not only as an American, but what that means as a Christian. How can we know when we are imprisoned? And how can we change without losing our moorings and commitments to those permanent values that define us? Change comes in all sizes. Sometimes the transitions are almost unnoticed and we just wake up one day finding that things we once believed have been replaced by new beliefs. Things we once held dear…

“By then day had broken everywhere, but here it was still night – no, more than night.” Pliny the Younger 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 all…