The next time you open up a book – be it a science fiction thriller or the latest Abraham Lincoln biography – you will be tempted to flip directly to the first page. Forget the table of contents or that strange page with all the tiny print that tells…
Spring has sprung here in the Quad Cities. Buds and flowers burst from trees that were bare just days ago. The once brown grass is lush and green. Tulips and daffodils and lilacs bring the kind of color that help us forget our gray February. It’s the…
Last week, on the Pearl Street walking mall in Boulder, Colorado, I sat on a bench enjoying my turkey and provolone Panini. It was a warm day, perfect for people watching. I began to study the movements of that city’s many homeless people. It is pret…
There is something about this time of year that makes everything seem possible. Last August the garden beds in our backyard were overrun with weeds and our hostas were dried out and weary looking. But this past weekend as we raked away the leaves, I…
Theaster Gates is an artist who lives and works in the south side of Chicago. Pottery became his passion, Theaster will tell you, because he was able to “learn how to make great things out of nothing.” With just the right finesse, a rather ordinary l…
Worship experiences have their own excitement. Other rituals in life, like taking out contact lenses at bedtime and brushing teeth in a particular way, are quite predictable. But in worship, anything can happen. A mother may get the strings of her da…
There are countless reasons given for justifying anti-Semitism around the world. I don’t like any of them. Why this minority population deserves to be consistently demonized defies all reason. There isn’t a century in the last 2000 years where people…
I am trying to fathom the experience of a 32-year-old black man highlighted in the Justice Department’s scathing report on Ferguson, Missouri’s corrupt police department. Our 32-year-old friend is cooling off in his car after a basketball game in a F…
Ever since I read about a woman named Betty Tudor more than 20 years ago, I have been unable to forget her tale. Her 19-year performance deserves an Oscar in the Academy Awards of Failure. A resident of Exeter, England, Ms. Tudor struggled to master…
There was a short lived game show that was on television from 2008-2009 called “Hole in the Wall.” Inspired by a Japanese television show, competitors were challenged to fit through a “hole in the wall.” A human form in various kinds of poses would b…
One of God’s favorite tricks seems to be the hiding of certain Kingdom of Heaven treasures in unsuspecting places. Insert extraordinary objects into ordinary surroundings and you are bound to create surprise. It’s a play right out of the playbook of…
At some point between the age of 4 and 14, we seem to lose a fair amount of our curiosity. If you want proof—just spend a few minutes in conversation with a preschooler. Some estimate that the average child asks somewhere between 100 to as many as 35…