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During the holiday season, my older son enjoys reading our past Christmas letters, many of which are now in a hard bound book my wife had made a few years ago.  

On New Year’s Eve we drove around with the top down on the Miata to view fireworks. On Saturday we rode to the park with the top down again, and walked our laps in short sleeves. Now, this is my idea of winter!   

When I was a young boy, there was a common saying among folks of my parents’ generation: 

A Christmas tree stands naked in our family room.  

By the time you read this, you will know the outcome of the Southeastern Conference championship game.  

I suppose this idea of Thanksgiving has gotten fairly complicated.  I grew up in Massachusetts, in such close proximity to Plymouth Rock that I was well acquainted with the romantic version of the Thanksgiving story.

Looking for the perfect gift that shows your loved ones how much you care?

Until recently, I knew very little about the supply chain.  

When you misspell something during a Google search you'll get a message that says "Did you mean?" and it offers a corrected approximation of your intent. 

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It is not lost on me that, when I ask a rhetorical question like, “How in the world did it get to be Thanksgiving?”, I am mouthing a variation on the platitudes heard in the commercials in which people are trying to keep from becoming their parents.  

You might be familiar with the old saying, “politics makes strange bedfellows.” 

Jimmy Dugan, the acerbic girls’ baseball team manager played by Tom Hanks in the 1992 movie, “A League of Their Own,” famously said, “There’s no crying in baseball.” 

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When someone learns that I had worked on staff with Dr. Gary Chapman and have co-authored some books with him, I’m often quick to add “I’ve known Gary since I was 14 years old and I can confirm that he’s the real deal.”  

For quite some time my college friend Martha and I have traded recommendations of books and authors. My wife Susan is now also part of the exchange.  

It is truly the most wonderful time of the year.  

At the end of the tennis match when I shook hands with my opponent at the net, I apologized.

It has become such a thing that it’s been given a label – “The Great Resignation.” 

In January of this year, on the eve of then-President Trump’s second impeachment, I wrote a piece about the intricacies of the impeachment process as set forth in the U.S. Constitution. I called it a civics lesson. 

By the time you are reading this, we are two weeks into the college football season.  

There have been previous references in this space to the struggles retail and dining establishments are having. 

When I was a grad student at Florida State University in the mid 80’s Ken Smith was my pastor at Fellowship Baptist Church. Ken had a profound impact on my life and on my approach to the role of the pastor in the congregation and in the community. During my years in Tallahassee Ken was also …

This will mark the third time I refer to former Tennessee governor Bill Haslam’s book, “Faithful Presence: The Promise and the Peril of Faith in the Public Square,” and I promise, after this week, to give it a rest.

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I'm tired.

Have you ever noticed that the tunes that get stuck in your head are almost always songs that you don’t really like?  You’re minding your own business, wandering the grocery store aisles searching for an obscure item, your eyes squinting to read faraway signage, your head looking side to sid…

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As promised, today I am providing my 2021 Summer Reading List.  

Existential Question #239 

With the school year behind us and summer trips on the horizon, with airline flights getting cancelled at the last minute and rental car rates through the sunroof, I offer this out-of-office email auto-reply you can use when leaving town for vacation or when skipping bond. 

Anyone who stops by here with any regularity knows I am a big proponent of listening to both sides of an issue. I am pretty sure there is a big deficit of that happening today.  

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There is a wealth of information available online if you are interested in the history of Father’s Day, which was celebrated yesterday. Although I consider it one of the greeting card holidays, it has been around in some form or fashion for more than a century.

There is one thing dads never get enough of: pure, intentional relaxation. With Father’s Day right around the corner and only a few days left to grab a last minute gift for Dad, why not get him a massage?

As I mentioned last week, this month marks 10 years I have been writing this column.

On May 11, a dangerous crack was discovered in one of the two 900-foot horizontal steel support beams that are critical to the stability of the Hernando de Soto Bridge in Memphis. The bridge crosses the Mississippi River and connects Tennessee and Arkansas to the tune of 60,000 cars and truc…

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