We once met a woman, well into her 80’s and confined to a wheelchair, in a nursing home. On the wall opposite her was a print of Andrew’s Wyeth’s painting, “Christina’s World.” Asked how she was doing, the woman pointed at the frame and said...
Change is a word often surrounded by flashing caution signs for church boards. Mention “change” and you just know someone will be upset. (Curiously, we often overlook the upset caused by our failure to consider change.) Change in the congregational context can be like atomic power....
Chances are, if you find yourself scrolling through cable channels late at night, you will come across a 1950s sitcom filmed in grainy black and white and called The Honeymooners. It starred Jackie Gleason, one of the biggest stars of stage and screen in those...
Well-written obituaries offer a treasury of cultural observation and life wisdom. Take the New York Times obituary of Joni James, a best-selling singer in the 1950’s who died last month at the age of 91. James recorded over 700 songs in her career, sold more...
At first glance, the title of the Harvard Business Review article “Managers Can’t Do It All” elicited the response, “Well, Who on Earth Can?” The article summarizes so many shared feelings of this moment: everything out of control, one-time work satisfactions seeping away, the erosion of...
Writing in this space in 2018, we took a remarkably calm and measured tone: A congregation of any size has within it those who do not agree with one another socially, politically, theologically. What does belonging to one another in a church mean when the headlines...
This week, a story from The New York Times reports: The United States is enduring its most severe increase in traffic deaths since the 1940s. By 2019, the annual death rate from crashes was near its lowest level since cars became a mass item in the...
Another week, another article about the dramatic shifts in work-life balance. Ginia Bellafante’s article in the New York Times carries the subtitle, “Even huge bonuses can’t offset plunging morale at investment banks and the rush to escape a ‘toxic’ work culture.” Many of the points in...
Maybe it’s the need for distraction as the pandemic stretches on, or perhaps it’s all those recent winning streaks, but the TV game show Jeopardy is receiving renewed cultural attention. Since mid-summer, two contestants – Matt Amodio and Amy Schneider (pictured to the left) –...