April 15

I hate April 15. It looms over my life like a black cloud. Every year I swear that I am going to get the tax preparation job done in January or February.
I think I broke my promise worse this year than any year before. I mailed a box of documents to my CPA [...]

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New Car – Answered Prayer

On Thursday I got a call from State Farm announcing that papers were in the mail and that I should sign them and return them along with the car title. The guy also said that I had 5 more days to rent a car.
I hadn’t even begun to look for a new car, so [...]

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An Evening with John Muir

Bev and I bought tickets to a dinner and a one-man show on the life of John Muir. Playhouse Merced arranged this special performance by Lee Stetson. Lee has been incarnating John Muir for 23 years in Yosemite National Park and is known internationally for the role.
John Muir is known all over California [...]

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Coincidence?

I don’t own a crystal ball, and I can’t tell where seemingly random events are headed. But looking backward at time, events often line up like a connect-the-dots drawing.
A couple of nights ago I was thinking about how insignificant an action appeared, months ago when it was performed. I picked up a publication [...]

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Surfing

You can’t surf on the shore. The water’s not deep enough, and there’s not enough room to operate.
The best surfers paddle out into the deep water, where the surf is rough–so rough it can even kill you. Their feet can’t touch the bottom, and the best they can hope to do is catch [...]

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Eduardo

I met Eduardo at the towing company. I called to ask if I could look inside my car for lost items one more time. They said, “Not a problem.”
The lady at the front desk called for Eduardo to go with me over to the storage lot to unlock the gate. I made [...]

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A Split Second

I was driving on a thoroughfare in central Merced on my way to dinner with Bev. She and our friends were at the restaurant waiting for me to return from getting our theater tickets which we left at home. I had just turned onto 22nd street and was proceeding through an intersection. [...]

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Can I help?

I said something about the weather. The guy was standing next to his truck trying to make a cell phone call. I didn’t realize that he was the business owner I had been e-mailing for two or three weeks.
When I stuck my head in the open door of his not-yet-opened business, his employees [...]

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iPod

Bev got me an iPod for my birthday. I requested it because the three television stations at the gym were becoming boring. On the fifth viewing of the day’s news headlines it starts to feel like Purgatory.
So with the iPod I can load up its memory with interviews, book reviews, travel documentaries, and sermons [...]

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Memory

My sermon today was about memory. John told the church in Ephesus to “remember” what they had fallen from, Revelation 2:1-7. Memory is the foundation of identity.
I saw a friend whose memory is slipping away. His normally natty appearance and youthfulness was missing. His hair stood up like someone that had [...]

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