How to Die Before You’re Dead (4) 

How to Die Before You’re Dead (4) 

VIEW VIDEO  When I was 6 years-old, my great-uncle Fritz died and I wanted to go to his funeral, not because I was especially fond of him, I barely knew him, but because I’d never seen a dead person, except in the movies. My brother Glenn, the veteran of several...
How to Die Before You’re Dead (4) 

How to Die Before You’re Dead (3)   

VIEW VIDEO  Winter arrived this past week, and with it, seasonal affective disorder (SAD), when the lack of sunlight plunges many of us into despair. The solution, of course, is Florida, which raises other difficulties, namely snakes. When I said winter arrived, you...
How to Die Before You’re Dead (4) 

How to Die Before You’re Dead (2)

VIEW VIDEO   It is good to be back with you. Last week, you’ll remember, was our Sunday for unprogrammed worship, which, since time immemorial, has been held on the fifth Sunday, four times a year. But the elders decided to have it last Sunday, the third Sunday,...
How to Die Before You’re Dead (4) 

How to Die Before You’re Dead     

I walked into town one day this week for lunch. It was a glorious, early autumn days that God is inclined to grace us with every now and then. Brilliant blue skies, pleasant temperatures, farm equipment passing by, the farmers on their way to their next field. Autumn...
How to Die Before You’re Dead (4) 

Finding Our Way (10)

VIEW VIDEO  Last month, Frank Gladden, bemoaning the scarcity of rain, questioned whether I had any pull with the Lord. I said, “I don’t know. Why do you ask?” He said, “My beans need rain. A real preacher would get me some rain.” So to save Frank’s beans and my...
How to Die Before You’re Dead (4) 

Finding Our Way (9)

VIEW VIDEO  I went with two of my siblings and my cousin to southern Illinois last weekend to revisit the haunts from our childhood. Most of the people we visited as children are now deceased, inhabiting various graveyards in Franklin County, Illinois, so much of our...
How to Die Before You’re Dead (4) 

Finding Our Way (8)

VIEW VIDEO  I attended a Quaker conference this past spring where one of the event’s sponsors, a non-Quaker wanting to sell us insurance, started listing all the good things Quakers had done over the years—the antislavery work, the work for women’s equality, our...
How to Die Before You’re Dead (4) 

Finding Our Way (7)

VIEW VIDEO  My brother Glenn and his wife Laurie have retired and are traveling the world seeing the sights, last year Europe, this year the Wild West. Now they’re at a dude ranch in Wyoming, getting along with the little dogies, or whatever it is one does at a dude...
How to Die Before You’re Dead (4) 

Finding Our Way (6)

VIEW VIDEO  One of the curious things about living in the town where you grew up is the flashbacks, past incidents recurring vividly in the mind. One of my best friends growing up, who remains a close friend today, Bill Eddy, was raised in the house across from where...
How to Die Before You’re Dead (4) 

Finding Our Way (5)

I was looking at a replica of one of the earliest maps of North America not long ago and on that map, California appeared as an island. The first mention of California as an island was in the year 1510, so for the next 191 years California was rendered as an island on...