In truth, in many years past, I was a been kind of an Ebenezer Scrooge. Well – maybe not as bad as Scrooge, but the commercialism and phoniness of a lot of the Christmas season has never sat very well with me. When does the Christmas season begin anyway? This year I think I saw my first Christmas decorations at Lowes at the end of September. And these days, we are not only bombarded with Christmas advertisements on television and in the media, but we have “Black Friday” and “

“Thank you, I really appreciate it.” What simple words these are and how very easy they are to say. Why is it that these words are forgotten so many times during our daily lives? Being thankful is something that seems to come easily to some people but is far too difficult for others. Being thankful is very characteristic of some regions of the world and even some regions of our country, but in far too many places, it is often forgotten. And, by the way, what is a typical resp

Photo by J W on Unsplash You might ask yourself the question: Why do human beings care for each other? It certainly seems there are a lot of people who do not seem to care about their fellow humans, except, perhaps, another person such as a wife and possibly their family members. If aliens landed on earth and looked around, they might misinterpret what they see. They might think that humans not only do not care about each other, but they are normally hostile to each other gi

Photo by Everyday basics on Unsplash The composer and guitarist Frank Zappa once said, “A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.” Ben Franklin commented, “Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.” And Mark Twain noted, “What you know for sure that just ain't so.” I could go on but you get the point. A willingness to continue to learn throughout a person’s entire life is really important because to do otherwise is to become mire

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash Conversations With the Sacred Throughout human history, one common characteristic of every culture is that there are people within the society who seem to have a special connection with the sacred – and, of course, what is called “sacred” is defined in very many different ways by the world’s religions and philosophies. We often call this type of relationship or bond a “mystical connection” and we call the person who can experience it a