Virtues – Perpetual Adoration

May 9, 2021

Rising Against the Wind

Do you know when the best time is for a hearing aid company to sell hearing aids to an elderly man? Take a guess.

April 25, 2021

When I was growing up, one saying that I would periodically hear was, “He does not suffer fools gladly.” I thought of that phrase last week when I realized that we are wrapping up the month of April, which means that a third of this year is gone. The reason I thought of the phrase was because the month of April is associated with fools because of April Fools’ Day.

April 3, 2021

A Plantation Hymn for Catholics

Did you know that there’s an old plantation hymn that Catholics traditionally sing in church on Good Friday? The hymn was composed in the 19th century by African American slaves and was first published in 1899 by William Eleazar Barton in his hymnal, Old Plantation Hymns. Here’s the first verse of the hymn:

March 20, 2021

The Road to Heaven is Paved With . . .

I had a dream last week about my grandmother, Effie Williams. I have a lot of fond memories of Grandma Effie. She passed away more than 34 years ago. She was smart, tough, resilient, industrious, organized, and patient.

February 21, 2021

Superior Talent on Loan from God

You’ve probably never heard of Robert Pittman. He’s a 67-year-old American businessman who was one of the founders of MTV, the first cable music television network in the United States. MTV was launched on August 1, 1981, and initially featured music videos and related programming that was presented by television celebrities who were known as VJs (video jockeys).

January 16, 2021

A Tornado is at our Nation’s Doorstep

When I was growing up, it didn’t happen very often, but every time there was a tornado warning, my dad would go outside and look toward the horizon where the tornado was supposed to be coming from. He wanted to see with his own eyes whether a funnel cloud was coming toward our house. There were a couple of occasions when everyone in our family went downstairs and stayed in the basement until it was safe to come up.

January 9, 2021

Stupid People and Foul Language on Facebook

When I was 11 years old, every Friday my dad made me write a personal letter to a woman he hardly knew. The woman’s name was Miss Miller, and she was my sixth-grade teacher at St. Mark Catholic Grade School. I don’t remember if it was her idea or his idea. All I remember is that after she called him on the phone a few times to complain about my behavior in class, they developed a scheme in which I was forced to write the following letter on a blank sheet of paper every week:

December 5, 2020

The Reflector Theory

When I was born (May 1957), my mom asked her 17-year-old brother, Dick LaHood, if he would be my godfather. My earliest memory of my Uncle Dick is from the early 1960s when he would pick up me and several of my brothers and sisters in his Cadillac and take us swimming at the Timber Lake Club.

November 28, 2020

The Season of Gratitude

During the Thanksgiving season, we usually hear and read about all the blessings we should be thankful for, such as our faith, health, family, country, and freedoms. The one common denominator in these blessings is that they were all given to us as gifts.