Dear Friends, A new genre of humor is emerging: jokes about 2020. I recently heard someone say they were not turning their clocks back “because no one wants an extra hour of this year.” I am not surprised that people want 2020 to be over. But, I do wonder why they...
Dear Friends, These days, I’ve been thinking about things I need to spend more time considering. Thomas Hobbes famously suggested that life is “poor, nasty brutish and short.” One might assume he is speaking from the context we find ourselves in today. Yet, most of us...
Recently, friends of ours invited us to a small gathering in the western suburbs to meet the daughter of the late Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia. She and her family had just moved to Chicago and were anxious to make some new friends. It was amazing to notice...
My parents gave me a lot of good advice. One piece I tend to ignore is, “Go to bed early, as nothing beneficial happens after midnight.” But there is one, I have adhered to for decades. “If at all possible, go to the wake or funeral.” Being in the line of work most of...
Dear Friends, It’s an Ice Age: Back when the Coronavirus was a news story from China, we had some warning from pundits that it was heading this way. As more and more cases occurred in the United States, it started to seem the only real question was whether it would...
While scientists and public health officials scramble to defeat the COVID19 virus, I have been thinking about how to respond in a way that brings hope and life to the situation we find ourselves in. Clearly we need to avoid naïveté and denial, selfish choices and...
Dear Friends, If you are like me, you don’t want to hear one more thing about the present situation with the coronavirus. It seems to be part of most conversations, and of course, naturally so. Though, I do love the fact that the world has come to our doorstep in the...
Dear Friends, Having watched Michael Jordan’s “The Last Dance” series a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but compare it to the situation facing many of us as musicians serving in a church setting. Is it possible we shared our “last dance” when we were...
Dear Friends, Summer is officially here! It’s time to fire up those grills, fill up the coolers and get ready to engage in all those summer activities we have been looking forward to over the recent months. Well, not exactly….I think we would all agree it has...
The story is told of a monk who woke up hungry in the middle of the night. After lighting a candle, he reached into a bowl of dates next to his bed, picked up one and took a bite of it. Glancing down at the half that remained, he noticed a worm, so he threw the date...
Dear Friends, It seems as though I was just pondering who would join our family for Thanksgiving and now we are marching through December. Though we don’t have any official programs planned for this month, I love that we are naturally surrounded by beautiful music of...
As a gardener, by November I have prepared my flower beds for the long Chicago winter. Furniture has been hauled into the garage and I’ve resigned myself to the fact that a high percentage of life will now be happening indoors. Winding down may be a natural scenario...