Was it, or wasn’t it? That’s the question people worldwide were asking about one scene in the Olympic Games opening ceremony.Was it a mockery of DaVinci’s painting of the Last Supper or, as the opening ceremony’s artistic director, Thomas Jolly insisted, simply a celebration of pagan gods? So, we can rejoice that it wasn't a…
A Return to Civility 6: Do Not Murder
A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six-year-olds. After explaining the commandment to "honour thy father and thy mother," she asked, "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?" Without missing a beat, one little boy (the eldest child of a family) answered,…
But What about. . .?
I was recently reminded of a story I read in a newspaper in April of 1985 (If you don’t know what a newspaper is, ask your parents). The story was about Galaxy Airlines Flight 203, which crashed in Reno Nevada on January 21, 1985.Seventy of the seventy-one passengers and crew died in the crash, the…
A Return to Civility 4: Keep the Sabbath
What a crazy world we live in today. Do you ever feel like the Rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland”? You know the one, he’s always rushing this way and that looking at his watch and muttering, “I’m late, I’m late”. It seems that every hour of every day is filled to the limit with things…
As Advertised on TV!
Last week I was listening to the radio, and they played a TV ad from the 1970s. As I listened, I could almost see it in my mind’s eye. If you are old enough you probably remember the ad for the K-Tel Record Selector. It was promoted as having a space-age design, finger-tip control and…
A Return to Civility 3
Recently I was reading an article written by a friend of mine, Mike McNeil. Mike and I are from the same home church, and he taught at Kingswood University for forty years before taking a teaching position with Kings Church in Saint John. Mike writes a column called Soul Apologetics, and this week the article…
That’s Wild!
That’s wild. A man in England is suing Apple for £5 million. Now, to be truthful we’ve all thought of suing Apple for various reasons. The wild part of this lawsuit is the reason. The man is suing Apple because his wife discovered ‘deleted messages’ he sent to sex workers on his phone and the…
A Return to Civilty 2
A couple of weeks ago we began our series “A Return to Civility” and I mentioned how earlier this year I had speculated on what I saw as a loss of civility in our society. We’ve come to a place where we can no longer agree to disagree, and we’ve stopped treating one another with…
Really?
What is with people these days, defacing historically significant items to protest climate change? Over the past few years, we’ve read reports of people defacing some of the great masterpieces from artists such as Monet, DaVinci, Picasso and Van Gogh. Last month, the same group targeted the Magna Carta as part of their protests. Last week…
Bang!
It was one of those stories that make you go, Hmmmm? Just recently it was reported that authorities in China secured a grenade that was in the possession of a 90-year-old resident of the village of Hubei. What makes the story more interesting is the lady had been using the grenade as a hammer since…