Sep 28, 2023
On April 4, 1991, I was halfway finished with a yearlong chaplain training program at UC Davis Medical Center when a social worker approached me with news.
“Our team is on standby tonight,” she whispered. She meant our Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Team, which was specially trained to debrief people who witness horrific incidents.
“Why?” I asked.
“You better catch the news,” she said, pointing toward a waiting room of people watching television. The special report conveyed the early hours of what is still the largest hostage crisis on American soil.
Aug 28, 2023
There’s nothing I love more than travel. Like the circuit-riding preachers of old, I’ll fly anywhere to speak to a crowd.
The only way travel improves for me is when I use frequent-flyer points for free flights.
So I was in a good mood recently as I took a free seat on a Southern California flight to see my family.
My usual airline doesn’t assign seats, so I’ve developed a strategy to find the best seat. Unfortunately, the strategy failed me this time. I took the last available spot, a middle seat over the wing.
Jun 28, 2023
The true cost of war is something I learned about while serving as chaplain on death notification teams. We delivered news no one wants to hear.
Movies often depict these teams visiting a three-bedroom house where Mom is making dinner and Dad is helping a younger sibling with homework.
Television dramas cast the teams in a four-man role as they approach the door in dress uniforms, knock, deliver the brief announcement and retreat to a government sedan.
Mar 28, 2023
Perhaps you remember the Veg-O-Matic commercial from the mid-1960s, where marketing guru and inventor Ron Popeil promoted a kitchen appliance by saying, “It slices, it dices and so much more!”
Veg-O-Matic ads inspired a “Saturday Night Live” spoof about a fish blender called the Super Bass-O-Matic, first performed by Dan Aykroyd in 1976.
Nearly 50 years later, let me introduce you to the Belief-O-Matic. Like the Veg-O-Matic, once you use it, you’ll wonder how you ever did without it.
I’m not kidding. The Belief-O-Matic is real.
