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Archives for Year 2002 (52 issues)
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Archives for Year 2001 -
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| December 31, 2001 |
I have a close friend who is eighty six years old and he tells me he doesn’t like answering the telephone any more. All too often, it seems, the call is intended to inform him and his wife that one more of his myriad of life long friends has “gone home to be with the Lord.” His wife says with a painful smile, “you know, it’s gettin’ kinda hard.” My life stage is somewhat different. |
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| December 24, 2001 |
Ethnic caricatures are always risky. Generalizations usually get qualified by exceptions. A thoughtful speaker will anticipate all the objections to a general thesis in his speech. It’s a sign of preparedness. You can generalize, but you can easily slip at your own peril and cross the line and over-generalize. It’ll be big trouble. |
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| December 17, 2001 |
If indeed America has battened down the hatches - staying home in the privacy and comfort of a cushioned living room comforted by the crackle of a cozy fire and the blinking color images of a television screen and the blaring of surround sound with powered sub-woofer keeping one’s attention focused on the tube, fearing the risks of an outside world hostile to all things serene - well, it didn’t happen last Friday night at Balboa Park. |
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| December 10, 2001 |
Jeni Stepanek is the mother of four children. A daughter and three sons. When her firstborn, Katie, came along, she noticed right away that something was wrong. After many tests, the doctors made an unhappy diagnosis – little Katie suffered a rare disease with an ominous name. Dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy. DMM for short. It’s a highly unusual and deadly form of muscular dystrophy. |
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| December 3, 2001 |
J. K. Rowling has a name for those who believe her work is somehow a subversive threat to the well-being of children. She calls them Muggles. |
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| November 25, 2001 |
Carolyn and I are recovering nicely from the Fourth Annual Extended Family Thanksgiving Feast and Sleepover. The count was thirty-one. As we bid farewell to this tribe of moms and dads and rascals of all ages and the proud Matriarch of the clan, and the caravan of Mini-vans and SUVs made there way back down the two lane country road heading home, we all agreed, there will be a Fifth. |
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| November 18, 2001 |
The Tuesday morning of September 11 was like any other morning for my friend Captain Dan. It was another beautiful day in the office – from his left seat in the cockpit of the jumbo jet – cruising at thirty-five thousand feet at about five hundred ten knots along the coast line of British Columbia, past Vancouver on north toward the Gulf of Alaska and over Prince Rupert then Ketchikan and then Juneau. The aircraft is locked into an electronic course, but these picturesque landmarks make for the best kind of navigation. The visual kind. Captain Dan pilots the jumbo MD-11 crisscrossing the globe routinely, in and out of far-away ports, all in a day’s work. |
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| November 12, 2001 |
Paradigm shift is sometimes the result of a shocking and fundamental blow to normality as we know it. We’ve been hearing lately that “this changes everything.” “We live in a whole new world.” “Nothing is the same anymore.” We no longer think of 911 as the number you dial in an emergency. It is, rather, a date that will live in infamy, September 11, 2001. Nine eleven. Nine-one-one. A watershed moment in the history of civilization. |
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| November 5, 2001 |
When President Bush first appeared in the dugout, he was surrounded by security, and a screaming crowd. While he showed no sign of concern, he had to be thinking about the risks. Certainly Laura (the First Lady) did. And if not Laura, his mother Barbara. |
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| October 29, 2001 |
Lately, when things seem to be closing in and stuff gets to me, I call Judy. Judy is two days younger than I. That means we’ve pretty well traveled through the last half century together, though I didn’t know her name until a little more than a month ago. Our paths only crossed recently. But we’ve journeyed through the decades on parallel paths. |
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| October 22, 2001 |
All along they’ve been telling us to be patient. That travel will involve delays. That the new war is like none other ever fought, and that victory will perhaps be a long time in coming, and tricky to define. |
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| October 15, 2001 |
When those novice pilots took control of the four jetliners, converting American passenger planes into guided missiles, and three of the four rammed the fuel laden jumbo airbuses and their passengers smack dab into the bull’s eye of their targets, the enemies of capitalism scored a major hit. |
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| October 8, 2001 |
Don Cousins was the organizational wizard behind the Willow Creek Community Church success story. For seventeen years, he and senior pastor Bill Hybels developed a mission strategy for one of the largest churches in the history of American ecclesiology. Hybels is the up front guy. Don was the infrastructure guy. |
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| October 1, 2001 |
We arrived at the wedding five minutes late. The invitation said three o’clock on Saturday afternoon. I pulled a four-wheel skid into the parking lot at the harbor hotel just after three. We jumped out of the car, I grabbed my blazer, clipped my Palm Pilot to my belt (just in case things got boring, I wanted to have Tetris handy) took Carolyn by the hand, and off we went to find the ceremony. |
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| September 24, 2001 |
Charles Wiley studied journalism at New York University just after World War II. Today, nearly fifty years later, his résumé highlights a colorful and checkered career. He has filed reports from war zones all over the globe, appeared on every major network, television and radio news outlet, and published articles in most every national newsmagazine (TIME, NEWSWEEK, US NEWS) and metropolitan newspaper including the New York Times. |
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| September 17, 2001 |
It’s a question I’ve been thinking about. Not just this week. Before Tuesday’s gut wrenching event, way down deep, I’d been wondering - what happened to the country I once knew? |
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| September 10, 2001 |
Where does it come from? This swelling of the throat. This heating up deep around the larynx. Momentarily cutting off speech. The need to swallow. What is its genesis? It’s mysterious and wonderful. It’s clear evidence of the existence of the soul. |
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| September 3, 2001 |
One of the more highly regarded youth pastors in our region got himself into hot water with some church members when under his tutelage, high-schoolers gathered for a viewing of the 1999 hit-movie THE MATRIX (now available on DVD and VHS) with discussion following. |
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| August 27, 2001 |
Issue #104 |
Dr. Jay Kesler, college president for over fifteen years and currently the University’s Chancellor, frequently attended obligatory forums for college and university Presidents during his tenure. These were motivational gatherings for focus on common concerns and communication and comradeship at a high level of academic leadership. Sometimes these meetings were strategic and poignant and riveting. More often, they were an utter waste of time, according to Jay. |
| August 20, 2001 |
I’m still not sure what got me interested in gardens. I’ve always enjoyed a well-manicured park bursting with springtime color. My grandmother was a Brit. All ninety-five pounds of her. Whenever the Queen of England makes an appearance, it’s as though Grandma Dorothy is alive again. Her voice, her manner. Her posture. Her reserve. |
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| August 13, 2001 |
When Pastor Bill agreed to officiate our daughter’s wedding, he smiled as he wrote the date in his calendar. “That’s my birthday,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Which one?” we asked. Might as well get the detail, we thought. “Forty.” Wow. This is a big one, we told him. |
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| August 6, 2001 |
I’m not sure I was thinking straight when my daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law asked me to pray the prayer of dedication in their wedding ceremony. Praying in public, well, I’ve done it all my life. |
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| July 30, 2001 |
Loveland Pass was once the price you paid to go through the gateway to the high country of Western Colorado. It’s a narrow, winding two-laner, making twists and turns way above the timberline. The guardrail keeps drivers from drifting over the shoulder and rolling over the edge to a certain demise. It’s a thousand foot plus drop off. |
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| July 23, 2001 |
Not long ago while visiting a friend in his office, I stopped to take a closer look at the oil painting on his wall. On the matting just inside the frame was a brass plaque that read, “NO PLACE FOR THE FAINTHEARTED.” |
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| July 16, 2001 |
Just the word calls up feelings of exhaustion. Marathon. We all know what it means. Grueling. Relentless. Interminable. Unremitting. Exhausting. Punishing. Merciless. |
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| July 9, 2001 |
You can have all the power you need - a high performance engine, efficient carburetion, open exhaust, proper fuel mixture and a machined crankshaft, transmission and differential – a perfect power train. You can deliver torqued-up power to the rear wheels, but without traction, you aren’t going anywhere. |
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| July 2, 2001 |
There is perhaps, no more effective conversation stopper between the generations than the old familiar opener, “When I was your age…” |
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| June 25, 2001 |
The focus around our house these days is the wedding plan.We’ve been through this once before, so you’d think we’d have it pretty well wired. Not so. |
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| June 18, 2001 |
Barely five months ago, there were plenty of doubters. Sure, the Los Angeles Lakers took the NBA Championship in the year 2000 with lots of fanfare. Seemed like the legendary former Bulls Coach Phil Jackson still had the magic from that unforgettable Chicago era. He was headmaster to that venerable basketball dynasty. |
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| June 11, 2001 |
Generally, I read the critics after I see the movie. Like children chasing the ball on the soccer field, critics seem to herd. It’s either thumbs up or thumbs down… across the board. I often wonder which among them sets the standard, the tone for the rest. Who are the Crowned Royals of Film Criticism? |
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| June 4, 2001 |
They call it the Brickyard. It’s an appropriate name - thirteen thousand two hundred feet (two and a half miles) of red brick (three point two million of them carefully laid out straight and level by a legion of masons back in 1909) fifty feet wide on the straight-aways and sixty feet wide on the four corners. It’s a rectangular oval speedway. Two long straight-aways are five-eighths of a mile long. The two short straight-aways are one eighth of a mile long. |
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| May 28, 2001 |
I was twenty-six years old and a senior pastor. One of my church leaders in the first or second year of my tenure just off the cuff mentioned one Sunday afternoon that he considered it an oxymoron to call a twenty-something pastor a senior. I was sharply offended. At the time. |
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| May 21, 2001 |
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to fly. Fly an airplane. An ultra-light. A fighter jet. An airliner. A glider. Or fly like Superman, one of my favorite boyhood fantasies. Didn’t really matter as long as I was airborne. |
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| May 14, 2001 |
We Boomers don’t like rules. We graying anti-establishment types never did appreciate it when anyone imposed some pre-determined program on us, restricting our options and treating us as though we were typical or average or commonplace or ordinary. From the start up until now, we Boomers continue to believe we are atypical, uncommon and extraordinary, and that there is no such thing as average. |
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| May 7, 2001 |
It was a non-stop flight from Boston to San Diego. It took awhile, but eventually I figured it out. The noisy group on board was a collection of physicians and medical students bound for a California conference. Next to me on the aisle sat a surgeon; a graduate of Harvard Medical School - one of the finest in the world. |
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| April 30, 2001 |
It’s said that character emerges in crisis. That you find out what someone is made of when calamity strikes. When we are blindsided by events spinning out of control. When without warning we are required to make split second decisions. And those decisions have consequences attached – lasting, permanent consequences. |
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| April 23, 2001 |
Bill Batstone is an unassuming guy. Unpretentious. He writes music. One of his songs has become a signature theme song for our young congregation out there in the country - down the road and over the hill from the Interstate. On Sunday mornings, especially Easter Sunday morning, you’ll hear our whole crowd waking up the neighborhood with one of Batstone’s creations. |
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| April 16, 2001 |
I never did buy into the notion that symbols are bad things. I was raised to be religious. But I was taught that “idols” were an abomination. That just about covered everything that one might call “religious art.” |
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| April 9, 2001 |
I’ve been a soft touch for ceremony since I was a little boy. It probably began with the annual Fourth of July parade in our little mid-west town. |
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| April 2, 2001 |
Alpine Slide (or Who Let the Dogs Out?) |
I was at the time, an impressionable seminarian. I guess I had experience in public speaking… and my denominational credentials were, to borrow a phrase, kosher. The Development Department at the Divinity School asked me and four other classmates to travel and speak and drum up support and maybe recruit a few new students. In three years we hit twenty or thirty states from coast to coast. |
| March 26, 2001 |
Towards the end of the era Western historians call the Renaissance Period, about the time Shakespeare wrote and directed his stage plays at the Globe Theater in London, and King James commissioned the translation of the Bible into modern English (The King James Version), about the same time the Captain John Smith with three ships and one hundred five other English cavaliers landed on the Virginia coast forming the first Settlement (Colony) at Jamestown, Rembrandt, the Dutch Master, refined his style as a painter and engraver in Amsterdam. |
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| March 19, 2001 |
A couple of years ago, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber turned fifty. I’m about eight weeks older then he. They threw a party for him in London. And what a party it was. |
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| March 12, 2001 |
How many ways can one say, “I love you?” Let me count the ways. I remember our first bedroom set. We found it at a warehouse furniture outlet; some cold and stark barn out where the real estate is dirt-cheap and the tilt up walls are as bare as the concrete floors. |
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| March 5, 2001 |
A well-known investment advisor in our town told a story to a breakfast gathering that he said illustrates best where investors go wrong. It was on a vacation in the Caribbean on an island in the Bahamas that he and his then elementary school aged son snorkeled in the shallow waters of a lagoon just off a white sandy beach, chasing the colorful fish and sea life of the tropics, laughing and playing. |
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| February 26, 2001 |
The plan was to play golf. We Californians like to talk about the rest of the nation, battling snowdrifts and heavy rains and wind and sleet and chilling cold and all manner of inclemency while we on the Southern end of the West Coast cavort in the sunshine, playing some out of doors game on a breezy winter’s afternoon. But it isn’t always so. |
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| February 19, 2001 |
The camera’s gone. Disappeared. I haven’t allowed myself accept the fact that I’ll never see it again. We’ve been good friends for a long time now, my 35mm Minolta with the 28-to-105 zoom lens and me. It’s just been misplaced. It’ll show up. Carolyn will come around the corner of the hallway with a smile and say, “look what I found.” That’s what I keep telling myself. |
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| February 12, 2001 |
When the Civil War ended, veterans returned to their families and farms, and many to commerce. One such businessman, a pharmacist and inventor, was a Confederate veteran of the War and a middle-aged druggist, Dr. John S. Pemberton. |
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| February 5, 2001 |
Psychologists talk about the inner child - the remnant of childhood that lingers on in us adults. The general idea is that adulthood somehow overlays the bright eyed wonderment of childhood, and covers up, or maybe even buries the very qualities that “maturity” so desperately needs. |
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| January 29, 2001 |
Super Bowl Sunday is built into the fabric of our collective national life. And I don’t believe it has much to do with the football game. The Ravens? Of Baltimore? Where did THEY come from? |
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| January 22, 2001 |
How would your life be different if you were blindsided by an unexpected, unavoidable diversion – into a four-year, involuntary isolation? For some of us, it would be a welcome change. |
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| January 15, 2001 |
“Have you got your tracking number?” “No,” I said, with a ring of disgust in my voice. I gotta believe that the telephone jockeys in the service pit who spend their days under a headset “assisting other customers” while the rest of the world is lulled into hypnosis by mind numbing easy listening music on hold can pick it up in an instant. |
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| January 8, 2001 |
I’ll never forget that Monday morning. It was October 19, 1987. An office-mate walked through my door and announced, “the stock market is in a free-fall.” We turned the radio on for confirmation. |
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| January 1, 2001 |
In 1935, Dr. António Egas Moniz, a Portuguese physician, discovered a surgical means of controlling aggressive, even violent behavior. By 1949, his work influenced medicine around the world. The procedure became known as lobotomy. |
LeaderFOCUS. Let’s make things happen – together.
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