May 21, 2020
Have you ever noticed that the word "silent" has the same letters as the word "listen?"I have a friend who never says much. She waits to see what other people think on any given subject before she expresses an opinion--or says nothing. I think she loves the safety of keeping her own counsel and undoubtedly doesn't want to alienate anyone. She is an occasional visitor to a coffee shop group I attend a couple of times a week at which the news of the day is often discussed, and when she is there, she is primarily a listener. We are not alike...
May 7, 2020
When an opinion columnist at the New York Times asked readers to share the status of their mental health with him in April, a few weeks into quarantine, he received more than 5,000 replies. While many said they were "hanging in there," the rest of the responses were more like a "river of woe and agony." All over the country, people who were at first happy to have a break in their busy lives, angling for bulk toilet paper online, are by this time frustrated, bored, and lonely...
April 21, 2020
So, here we are in the midst of a "quarantine," the latin root word of which is "forty." Why is forty so important? Mentioned 146 times in Scripture, the number 40 generally heralds a period of testing and transformation. For example, the flood was caused by a rain that fell for 40 days and 40 nights and Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai when he was given the 10 Commandments. When Moses sent men to scout the land of Canaan, they were gone for 40 days. In Judges 3, "The land had rest for 40 years" after many years of war. The Israelites spent 40 years in the desert before they took the promised land and...
April 6, 2020
I do about three miles a couple of times a week walking on the Monon Trail and happened by this goose standing on top of one of the old cottages on Cornell Avenue. All the other geese are in pairs, honking and letting everyone know they are claiming nesting areas, but this guy is abiding by our current social distancing regulations and he looks like many of us who are feeling a little lonely...
March 23, 2020
I was at Kroger yesterday. Shelves were bare. People were racing around. There was a line 90 feet long for the two check-out counters they had open and a dozen self-checkout stations with lines of their own. Pandemic Panic has set in. In the line one woman was telling me she had no spleen (?), another was asking me how I could be calm…"watch the news!" she demanded. (As if I hadn't been watching the 24/7 coverage of COVID-19.)
March 9, 2020
Rudy Rasmus pastors a church he started in the 90s with 9 members. Today he ministers with his wife to 9,000 souls just outside Houston, TX. But last Sunday he spoke in Indianapolis and began his message by telling us about the day he was planning to end his life. It was August 14th in 2017, and he was overwhelmed by a belief that his life no longer had meaning. He called the therapist he'd been seeing for many years who listened to his crushing feelings of hopelessness, paused for a moment and quietly said, "Rudy, you've been running from failure your entire life, maybe you should consider a perspective change. Instead of looking behind you, why don't you start looking ahead?"
February 24, 2020
Taxpayers pay millions to keep lawbreakers off the street, yet when the courts decide these folks are ready to be released, they often find themselves in situations that tend to send them right back behind bars. Recidivism serves no one, and while repeat criminals must be incarcerated, too many go back to prison due to technical violations not crimes. In the picture, left, Lena Hackett, CEO of Community Solutions is explaining a graph that breaks down into percentages those who returned to jail or prison for various reasons. The smaller blue portions of the bars represent the recidivism percentage of those who committed a new crime and were reincarcerated. But that much larger gold portion represents those who are returned to prison because they have violated technicalities of their release as set out by a judge...
February 7, 2020
With 153 gun-related homicides last year, it's clear we haven't solved the problem of gun violence in our city. A new "Gun Violence Intervention Program" has been in effect for more than 10 months here, and while it has promise, utilizing tactics that had its roots in a successful effort in gang-ridden Oakland, CA., there is not a lot of evidence the effort Is succeeding. At the dawn of 2020 city leaders proudly claimed the success of reducing gun homicides for 2019. But a closer look reveals non-death shootings were actually higher than the previous year. Pretty obviously, if the shooters had been just a little better at hitting their targets, we would have been unable to claim a reduction in gun-related homicides.
January 21, 2020
Love is a dangerous thing. Martin Luther King was targeted because while he hated the misdeeds of the past, he loved the future. He wanted all races to get together, he professed a future where we all lived in harmony. He talked about that future, he envisioned that future, he brought love to the future. And it worked. It is working. That is what so frightened his opponents...
January 7, 2020
Last week, the Indianapolis Recorder reported on the resignation of Pastor John Girton from Christ Missionary Baptist Church. After five years of leading the church in which he had been baptized, a church that was formerly lead by his uncle, he had to quit. "Pastor G," as he is commonly called, isn't old. He's not ill. He is burned out. Here's why: According to the Schaeffer Institute, 70 percent of pastors constantly fight depression, and 71 percent say they are worn out...
