On this day in 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from Elba, an island off the northwestern coast of Italy. Exiled there in May 1814, the French emperor was permitted to retain […]

My dad grew up in a Texas sharecropper’s shack during the Great Depression. He was barely a teenager when the “Grasshopper Wars” began. The winged insects darkened the sky like […]

In seminary, I was a youth pastor. Every summer during this time, I served as a volunteer at high school church camp. Those were halcyon days spent in small groups, […]

No one really knows the exact origins of Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent.  A ritual for the “Day of Ashes” is contained in an 8th-century church document, but […]

  That curious season of Lent is upon us with its ashes and forty days and emphasis on self-denial. Where did it come from? What does it mean? Should we […]

  Ash Wednesday cometh and, with it, the beginning of Lent. My earliest memories of Lent are rooted in my community theater days in Oklahoma. At a rehearsal on a late-winter evening, […]

With Ash Wednesday, the shadowy journey of Lent has begun. Lent is a season that doesn’t bring warm fuzzies like Christmas or Easter. You’re not going to find a Hallmark […]