“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? “ Mark 8:36-37 The year was 1863. Abraham Lincoln was President. Strife ruled. The nation was at war with itself. The landscape by most visionaries …
“The coffee was hotter and blacker than the sins of the devil himself. But it tasted just right, you might say.” Louis L’Amour ********** Life demands verbal responses. The choices are many, from the crude to the superlative. Finding the appropriate middle ground is a challenge. ‘Just right’ might be the perfect choice for …
Whistling…you either can or you can’t. There’s no middle ground. ********** I was about 10 years old when I first heard the question, “Son, what do you want to do when you grow up?” I knew without even thinking…. all I ever really wanted was to be able to whistle. It’s a tough question …
“The tongue is a fire…and it is set on fire of hell.” ********** It was a long time ago and far away when the Apostle penned this theorem. He was sitting under a date palm near the Dead Sea discussing women with his tongue-tied camel. The validity of the theory was confirmed later that day …
“So here’s a quarter, call someone who cares.” Travis Tritt wrote those lines, having been shafted by a romance gone bad. Country music can synthesize anything with these ‘somebody done somebody wrong songs.’ They lend substance to America’s self-indulgent malaise. Everybody’s protesting something. Everywhere there’s Unrest, Disunity, Dysfunction and Inequity. It’s a cacophony of chaos. …
Medicine is in a civil war…science versus art. The battle rages, tooth and nail. ********** You know it’s time when pain is a hot poker in your joints, when your vows of repentance fall flat, when the rosaries of contrition become nooses and when the prayers of the doomed no longer cut it. Then you …
Admit it, some things in life spook us, like being behind trucks with ladders. ********** They’re everywhere, these pickups, their loose ladders bouncing about, deadly potential projectiles threatening with every bump to pierce your windshield and remove your head. Oh, the paranoia. Recently I’m driving down a two-lane highway at a pretty good clip. The …
The venerable, time-tested idioms and clichés are rusting out. They’re about to bite the dust. Acronyms and instagrams of verbal arcana now rule, the new Esperanto. I’ve dusted off and cobbled together a few old ones. They still tell it like it is. ********** We live in a culture of idiomatic clichés. We’re comfortable with …
It’s easy to fit in…it takes courage to step out. ********** I’m reading La Rochefoucauld’s maxims. This one catches my interest: “In every walk of life each man puts on a personality and outward appearance so as to look what he wants to be thought. In fact, one might say that society is entirely …
Brains and sponges have something in common: they require squeezing on a regular basis to remain useful. Sponges are simple, utilitarian tools. Our household has lots of them, big ones, small ones, all colors. They’re mainly used for cleaning dirty dishes, a simple task requiring little brain function, which explains why men are sometimes assigned …