All of us are going to die someday; some much earlier than others, but the end result is the same for us all. We are all aware of this at some level, but most of us don’t like to talk about it. And far too few of us give any thought to the impact on those we will leave behind when we do pass away. The families of those who die young, especially if their death is sudden and unexpected, are most often the least prepared for the consequences. So, it behooves us to make preparations to alleviate some of the concerns our family will face when we are gone. It is good to do this while you are still in full use of your faculties and can calmly take the necessary steps. Of course, as you age, it becomes more urgent to ensure that your family is prepared to carry on without you, as your remaining time on earth grows shorter. So, the earlier the better, rather than waiting until it becomes urgent. As an 82-year-old widower, I can tell you of the things I have done over the years to prepare my family for my inevitable death.

First of all, after my wife and I were married, we had a lawyer prepare wills for us so the surviving spouse after one of us died could avoid a lengthy probate. We updated our wills after our daughter was born, and again later when she married. I had my will updated once more after my wife passed away to make my daughter and her family my primary beneficiaries. We also had a lawyer prepare durable powers of attorney for health care, general powers of attorney, and directives to physicians for each of us, with each other designated as agents to exercise them. I also had mine updated with my daughter designated as my agent after my wife’s death. My daughter has the originals of all these.
From the beginning of our marriage my wife and I both had full knowledge of our finances, with joint banking accounts and credit cards. That way we could both keep track of our bills to make sure they were paid on time. And we always paid our credit card bill in full each month to avoid interest and mounting debt.
Later we both had professional careers and separate retirement accounts, with each other as the primary beneficiary. When my wife passed away, as her beneficiary, I was able to roll over her retirement account into mine and updated my account to make my daughter’s family the primary beneficiary. At that time, I also amended my bank accounts (checking and money market) to add my daughter as co-owner, so she would have full access to them with nothing more required after my death.
My wife and I did not have a burial policy or a burial plot at a cemetery. Since we did a lot of international travel, we had policies with the Neptune Society to provide cremation services. In the event either of died anywhere in the world they would come to pick up the body, cremate it and ship the ashes to your home or to someone, such as a family member. In the event you pass away overseas this eliminates the need to purchase a coffin and arrange to have it shipped back to the U.S.A. They also provide two nice cherrywood boxes to store the ashes if you do not want to purchase an urn. My wife passed away at a hospice facility in Dallas, so a Neptune representative arrived within hours of a phone call notifying them of her death. They took her body and had her ashes delivered to me a few days later. When I pass away eventually my daughter will only need to call an 800 number to have my remains taken care of. She can then do whatever she wants with my wife’s and my ashes.

Shortly before my wife died, we sold our 4-bedroom 2,600 sq. ft. home and moved into a 1,200 sq. ft. 2-bedroom apartment in an active senior living facility near our daughter’s home. Before we moved, we gave our daughter the baby grand piano she learned to play on and a dining room set (table and chairs) to replace their old one. Those were all of our possessions that she wanted. We hired a firm to put on an estate sale and then donated what didn’t sell to charity. We kept two sets of bedroom furniture, a soda, recliner and a television stand to move to our new apartment, an purchased a small dining table and chairs and a coffee table to fit in the apartment. So, our daughter will not have a house to sell and only a small amount of furniture to deal with after my passing. We also cleaned out our garage and attic, shredding 10 or 12 boxes of unnecessary papers, including cancelled checks dating from the 1970’s, and put everything else, including a drill press, grinder and automotive tools in the estate sale.

After my wife died, I gave my daughter a list of information, including my bank and retirement accounts, health care documents (Medicare Parts A & B, Mediate supplement policy and Prescription Drug plan), Neptune Society cremation plan, Social Security and credit cards. I also gave her a list of the usernames and passwords for all of my online accounts and services, and of all of those with automatic payment withdrawals from my checking account. This will allow her to notify the Social Security service of my death, to cancel my credit cards, and to cancel my online accounts and services, as well as notifying my retirement accounts of my death and claiming them as my beneficiary.

My car title and other documents, as well as USB drives with backup files for my computers I keep in a fire safe box in my computer room.
I have given my daughter all of the family photo albums except of a couple I have in my apartment, as well as my maternal grandmother’s diary.
I trust that all of this will alleviate the burden on my daughter as she closes out all of my affairs after I am gone.

I have several friends whose parents did few if any of these things, leaving them with a major job to close out their affairs after their last parent died.

On December 21, 2017, Dr. Mary Carolyn Miller Harrison, my wife of almost 53 years, passed away. Although she had been in declining health for several years, her death was still a shock. Ministering to her needs had been my primary concern for so long I was left wondering “Why am I still here? What am I supposed to do now? God soon reminded me of what my primary purpose (or if you prefer, mission) in life was. And it was simply this:

• To stand hour by hour each day in the conscious presence of God
• To do what I can, moment by moment, day by day, step by step to make this world a better place, following the leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit
• To exercise my greatest gifts, which most delight me to use, in the places God has caused to appeal to me the most, for the purposes which God most needs to have done in the world.

Understanding that had been the key to the exciting and rewarding life of challenge, adventure and accomplishment that Mary Carolyn and I had shared for over half a century. We had been given opportunities to go many places we had never dreamed of going and to accomplish things we had not known we were capable of. We learned this was in fulfillment of our God-ordained destiny for us, which far exceeded anything we could have imagined. And in the seven years since Mary Carolyn’s passing, I have come to realize that God has further plans for my life, that he is not through with me yet, and that is the reason I’m still here.

Last May I celebrated my 82^nd trip around the sun. My body is starting to feel my age, but my spirit feels ageless. I am still enjoying an exciting and rewarding life of challenge, adventure and accomplishment, like that my late wife Mary and I shared for over 50 years. My life of course changed dramatically when she died six and a half years ago, but I continue to do much of what she and I did together for so long. The difference is that although she is not with me physically anymore, I still carry her spirit with me in my heart and mind.

When I came home from the hospice center on the day Mary died, as I entered our apartment, the realization that she wouldn’t be coming home, that she was dead, swept over me like a tidal wave. I uttered a primal scream, dropped to my knees  at my bedside and cried for a long time. I slept that night as an exhausted man, and when I awoke the next morning, I cried out to God:

“What now, Lord?”

“Why am I still here?

“What do you have in store for me now?

Over the next few months God began to show me what I was to do. I was to share my life experiences with anyone who was going through some of the trials I had endured, to let them know that God will walk with them through it, and bring them out the other side, strengthened and changed. And that is just what I do. My life is much different now that Mary is gone, but it is still exciting and rewarding.

Mary’s death had a profound effect on me. It brought into sharp focus the fragility and unpredictability of mortal life and the necessity of making the most of whatever time we have remaining. I thank God every morning when I wake up still not dead for giving me yet another day of life. And I ask God to help me use my time that day wisely and productively, knowing that when it is gone it is gone and won’t be coming back. In other words,  I strive to live each remaining day to the fullest. And that is a blessing indeed.

I also fully accept my own death as inevitable, but I have come to regard it much differently. I no longer view it as an ending, but as a new beginning, I see it as a passageway to a new and better life, and an everlasting one. Death, rebirth, renewal.

And lately now, I am beginning to view death as a blessing, rather than a curse. As I age and my physical body continues to slowly deteriorate, I realize that leaving behind the pain and the increasing limitations of this body is a good thing. The body will die, but I will continue to live. Death will usher me into a new realm in which there is neither death nor dying, no sorrow or pain, where all my tears will be wiped away, and I will experience joy beyond anything I can imagine.

It’s not that I am hoping for death anytime soon. I still a lot of work to do to accomplish the purpose God intends for me. But when death does come, I will welcome it as a friend and not any enemy.

A.I., artificial intelligence, is an evolving technology being highly touted as a tool to improve productivity for individuals and businesses by taking over repetitive or menial tasks and allowing human workers to focus more time on strategic, creative, or more complex responsibilities. It can write essays, reports, solve math problems and much more. A.I. draws on an ever-expanding database of human experience and knowledge gathered over several millennia of human existence. Unfortunately, in its current stage it sometimes produces false results, so needs human intervention to distinguish fact from fiction. There is also growing concern in some quarters about the possible consequences of bad actors using A.I. for nefarious purposes. Nevertheless, it is a new and emerging technology that needs to be understood and dealt with.

On the other hand, I have relied for many years now on what I would call S.I., Supernatural Intelligence, to help me improve my productivity. It draws from the mind of God, whose thoughts are higher than human thoughts, whose intelligence is far greater than human intelligence, and which goes back many millennia to before the advent of time as we know it. Because of this, S.I. alone can answer questions that mankind is still trying to understand, such as how the universe came into existence, how intelligent life evolved, and what man’s role is in this life, his reason for existence. Knowing  the answers to these things, S.I. can provide us with a much more exciting and rewarding life of challenge, adventure and accomplishment that sometimes can produce miracles by guiding and empowering us to accomplish our life’s purpose . I highly recommend that you try it. It is readily available if you ask God for it and will greatly improve your productivity and quality of life, and sometimes produce astounding results.

The COVID19 pandemic, followed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Ukrainian response, the Hamas attacks on the State of Israel and the Israeli response, as well as numerous other areas of unrest and armed conflict in the Mideast has fostered a state of anxiety here in the United States. This has also been exacerbated by concerns over border security and political bickering preceding the upcoming 2024 national election. As a result, a widespread feeling of anxiety is a significant ongoing issue for many in the American public. And this is also true for the populations of other countries directly or indirectly affected by the global unrest.

“Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events…It is a feeling of uneasiness and worry, usually generalized and unfocused as an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing…Anxiety is closely related to fear, which is a response to a real or perceived immediate threat (fight or flight response); anxiety involves the expectation of future threat including dread.
The emotion of anxiety can persist beyond the developmentally appropriate time-periods in response to specific events, and thus turn into one of the multiple anxiety disorders…The difference between anxiety disorder (as mental disorder) and anxiety (as normal emotion), is that people with an anxiety disorder experience anxiety most of the days during approximately 6 months, or even during shorter time-periods in children. Anxiety disorders are among the most persistent mental problems and often last decades. Besides, strong percepts of anxiety exist within other mental disorders, e.g. obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder.” (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The key to understanding both anxiety and fears of the future is that both are responses to perceived or anticipated threats to a person’s well-being. Neither is related to actual current events or extant threats. They involve concern about what could or might happen someday that the individual does not feel they will be able to cope with.

So, what can be done to dissipate the state of anxiety? Since no one can accurately foretell the future, the answer is to focus one’s attention fully on the present and to do what one can do now to resolve (or at least begin to resolve) any current issues. That can go a long way toward preventing future issues which can arise if no attempt has been made to resolve the current ones.

The Bible has some advice regarding anxiety.

Jesus said, “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matthew 6:31-34)

And the Apostle Paul said, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:6)

As for myself, I am confident that God is still in charge and that he has everything under control, even though I can’t always see how. So, I embrace the mystery and trust that God, who alone knows the future, will provide everything I will need, and will let me know if there is anything I need to do now to be prepared for what is coming in the future. That is why I have no anxiety about current or future events.

From very early times mankind has wondered about the origin and nature of the universe and our place in it. Many theories have also emerged over the years about the origin of life and where it can be found. Let’s examine some of these theories.
Early man looked at the movements of the sun, the moon, and the other stars and planets and concluded that the Earth was at the center of the universe and these all revolved around it. They believed the Earth was essentially flat and if you could travel to the extreme edge of it, you would fall off. This belief was challenged once sailing ships which ventured far enough from shore were observed to sink below the horizon only to rise and reappear as they returned to shore. Gradually the belief grew that the Earth was a sphere like the heavenly bodies observed. Thie evolved to the point that, in 1492 A.D., Christopher Columbus set sail towards the west to find a route to India which lay east of Europe, discovering the American continent instead. Then in September 1522 a remnant of the crew of Ferdinand Magellan, although he had died along the way, completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth, proving conclusively that Earth was a sphere.

The next big change came in the middle 1500’s A.D. when the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus proposed that the planets, including Earth. have the Sun as the fixed point around which they orbit. This representation of the heavens is usually called the heliocentric, or “Sun-centered,” system. Needless to say, the idea that Earth was not the center of the universe caused great consternation in religious circles and fostered a surge in scientific investigation of the nature of the universe.
Sir Isaac Newton, an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author, was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. In his pioneering book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, he formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the mechanical worldview developed from the work of Newton, René Descartes and Francis Bacon, saw the universe as a great machine put in place and set in motion by God, the master technician, which ran itself with a precision such that the movement of its parts could be calculated with great precision.

Then Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity (e=mc 2) in 1905, which described the relationship energy and matter. Ten years later (in 1915) he published his general theory of relativity, which postulated that gravity might not be a force like the other physical forces, but a result of spacetime’s curvature. Einstein’s field equations, published in 1916, predicted the expansion of the universe, but he initially believed that the universe as a whole did not change, thinking he had made a mistake somehow in his equations. By 1922 Russian mathematician Alexander Friedman had shown Einstein’s equations allowed three different solutions, one of which was the model of the universe expanding through time, and he tried to convince Einstein of this. But direct evidence of this theory was needed, which came when observational cosmologist Edwin Hubble observed through the telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory in California that the cosmological red shift showed the universe was expanding at a calculable rate. It was Georges Lemaître then, the Belgian mathematical cosmologist, who in 1931 invented the theory that the cosmos was expanding from a powerful explosion at the beginning of time, i.e., the Big Bang theory. Working backwards from the current state of the universe, scientists have theorized this all began roughly 13.8 billion years ago, which is thus considered to be the age of the universe.

So, the universe was once again seen as a vast machine with predictable movement of its parts, as previously envisioned by Isaac Newton, René Descartes and Francis Bacon, except this time it was dynamically expanding, rather than remaining static. This theory worked quite well on the macroscopic level with large objects which could be observed, and which could have their characteristics and movements precisely calculated. The study of quantum mechanics, however, beginning around 1900 and progressing throughout the 20th century, deals with microscopic or subatomic particles, and it began to change our understanding of the nature of the universe.

Quantum mechanics differs from classical physics in which energy, momentum, angular momentum, and other quantities have discrete values which can be accurately measured. In quantum physics, objects have characteristics of both particles and waves (wave–particle duality); and there are limits to how accurately the value of a physical quantity can be predicted. Superstring theory, which emerged in the 1980s, added the suggestion that the microscopic landscape is suffused with tiny strings whose vibrational patterns orchestrate the evolution of the cosmos, which appears to resolve the conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics. It also suggested the existence of additional dimensions beyond the four we are familiar with, bringing the total up from four to ten or eleven, possibly including more than one dimension of time. One thing is absolutely clear from all these discoveries. There is much more to the physical universe than meets the naked eye.

So much for the current status of an evolving universe. Although we now believe we know how and when the universe began, the question remains: What set off the Big Bang that started it all and why? Many scientists have realized that the way in which the universe has evolved had to be exactly as it has been in order for the unfolding of life on the Earth, the only place in the universe where we have found it so far. Based on what science has discovered, three main schools of thought have formed. Each of these agree that the expansion of the universe is extraordinarily elegant. The first focused on the idea of a multiverse of many different universes, one of which (ours) evolved exactly as needed to produce life. The second suggested it was all somehow by design, But whose? And the third focused on the inner ordering dynamics of the universe, without saying how that came about.

There is no way we on Earth can verify the existence of other universes than the one in which we reside, so let’s stick with the other two approaches. The design approach requires an entity with the ability to not only conceive, but also execute, the design. Christians believe that entity is God, but many others dismiss the idea that God exists. We’ll return to that later. The third approach suggests the universe has a mind of its own. Let’s explore that idea a bit. Many authors have written about this. Eckhart Tolle, for instance, a German-born spiritual teacher and self-help author, in his extensive writings, offers a very contemporary synthesis of Eastern spiritual teaching. He claims there is no ultimate distinction humans, God, and Jesus. He urges us to keep in touch with the deepest source of our Being, a term he uses to describe the universal essence he says we all share. When asked if he was talking about God, he replied: ‘The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse…The word Being explains nothing, but nor does God…Nobody can claim exclusive possession of Being”.

Carl Sagan, the American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, science communicator, author, and professor, said: “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”
And: “The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding… They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival”. And as to human life he said” “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” He makes no effort to explain how and why the cosmos came into existence, only that it does and that as it evolved it produced life.

In his book “Cosmogenesis; An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe” Brian Thomas Swimme begins by saying he wanted to discover “the mathematical structures of a cosmic primordial intelligence that knew we were coming.” Scientific discoveries over the last four and a half centuries, he says “have enabled us to discover our cosmic genesis, which can be summarized as: the universe began fourteen billion years ago with the emergence of elementary particles in the form of primordial plasma, which quickly morphed into atoms of hydrogen, helium, and lithium; a hundred million years later, galaxies began to appear and in one of these, the Milky Way, minerals arranged themselves into living cells that constructed advanced life, including evergreen trees, coral reefs, and the vertebrate nervous systems that humans used to discover this entire sequence of universe development.” His conclusion is that the universe began structuring itself from the beginning with the objective of creating life in an environment that was perfectly suited to harbor and maintain it. And he seems to imply that the universe did this of its own accord.

On the other hand, design scientists, such as William Dembski, pursue the idea that the universe is just right for life because an outside divine agent has designed things that way, which is in keeping with Isaac Newton’s belief. They regard the design approach to be philosophically superior because it provides an actual explanation of why the universe is the way it is, going beyond the bare fact that it is. For those of us who believe in God, the Bible offers much to support this theory. To start with , the first book of the Bible tells us that in the beginning of time, God created the universe, sun, moon, stars, the planets, and then all living things, including human beings made in his own image and likeness. And these were placed on Earth, one of the planets, in an environment that was perfect to nourish and sustain them. That is still true today, in spite of all our misbegotten efforts to deface and destroy it. And it will remain so until God replaces it with a new and better Earth, in spite of our fears of nuclear annihilation.

To answer the questions of the origin of the universe and particularly of life, the Apostle John wrote:
“From the first he {Christ} was the Word, and the Word was in relation with God and was God.
This Word was from the first in relation with God.
All things came into existence through him, and without him nothing was.
What came into existence in him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
(John 1:1-4 The Bible in Basic English)

So although Jesus in the form of human flesh was born and lived, died, and rose again during a specific period of time, Christ was present in the beginning.
Jesus himself said: Truly I say to you, Before Abraham came into being, I am.
(John 8:58 The Bible in Basic English)

In his book, “The Universal Christ” Richard Rohr says:
“The revelation of the risen Christ as ubiquitous and eternal was clear affirmed in the Scriptures (Colossians 1, Ephesians 1, John 1, Hebrews 1) and in the early church when the euphoria of the Christian faith was still creative and expanding’.
But, he says:
“When the Western church separated from the East in the Great Schism of 1054, we gradually lost this profound understanding of how God has been liberating and loving all that is.”
He continues:
‘A cosmic notion of Christ competes with and excludes no one, but includes everyone and everything (Acts 10:15, 34) and allows Jesus Christ to finally be a God figure worthy of the entire universe.”
“Everything visible”, Rohr says, “without exception, is the outpouring of God.”
And “God loves things by uniting with them, not be excluding them.”
Rohr goes on to say:
‘What I am calling in this book an incarnational worldview is the profound recognition of the presence of the divine in literally ‘every thing’ and ‘every one”.

This agrees somewhat with what Eckhart Tolle, Carl Sagan and Brian Thomas Swimme postulated, but instead of an amorphous Universe, Rohr says this is the very person of God in Christ. So what is God’s purpose in creating all this? The Apostle Paul told the church at Ephesus:
“God has allowed us to know the secret of his plan, and it is this: He purposes in His sovereign will that all human history shall be consummated in Christ, that everything that exists in Heaven or earth shall find its perfection and fulfillment in Him.” (Ephesians 1:9, 10 J B Phillips translation)

So the universe and everything in it, including us, was brought in being through Christ and will culminate in Christ. That is the whole story, pure and simple.

I have recently realized that God has been teaching me about his perspective on diversity and inclusion. If you take a good look at God’s creation you can’t help but notice the immense diversity of it. Stars, planets, galaxies and right here on Earth, grasses, trees, flowers, insects, birds, animals and human beings of all shapes, sizes and colors make it obvious that God loves diversity. And God calls us to love and care for all of his creation, not excluding anything or anyone, but including everything and everyone in our circle of love and care.

God began teaching me about this early in my life, giving me a love for his creation and over time a love for the people in it. My life began in an era of rabid segregation, separating people of color from polite white society. Fron an early age, I remember signs in public places designating white and colored restrooms and drinking fountains and requiring blacks to ride in the back of buses and streetcars. There were white churches, black churches and Hispanic churches (mostly Roman Catholic) and people in those had little if anything to do with those of different ethnicities.

All of my friends were white, and I never associated with anyone of color until I got to junior high and high school. That was when I began to experience diversity and inclusion. The schools I went to bordered on a part of Dallas called Little Mexico, an Hispanic enclave that no longer exists, having been now displaced by the Uptown Dallas area as part of the drive for urbanization. However, in the mid to late 1950’s Little Mexico was a thriving community that preserved Hispanic culture and mores. And, as a result of its proximity to Little Mexico, about one-third of the students at North Dallas High School were Hispanic. Most of them were second and third generation American citizens, born in the United States, who spoke English as fluently as us white folks. I developed friendships with many of them, taking classes together and participating with them on sports teams and in social clubs. I still keep in touch with some of them today, more than 60 years later. I accepted them as equals, having no qualms about their ancestries or the fact I was a Protestant, while they were Roman Catholics. I discovered that we had much in common, including our core religious beliefs.

However, because of the segregation laws in force at the time, it was much later that I began to have any interaction with blacks. As a matter of fact the first black man I ever met and made friends with was while I was in the M.B.A. program at what is now the University of North Texas. We were in a management class together and were assigned a joint work project requiring a lot of research and report writing. We met outside of class, sometimes at his apartment, and got to know each other well. We became a good team and got a good grade on our work product. His name was Ernest P. Boger. He was a sergeant in the U.S. Army, who had been the valedictorian of Blake High School in Tampa, Florida and became the first African American student at the University of South Florida. He graduated in 1965 with a degree in psychology, with minors in Russian and music. He later earned an MBA from the University of North Texas and a Doctor of Management degree from the International Management Centres Association (IMCA), of Buckingham, England.
In 1984 he became the first Black professor in what is now known as the College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management at the University of South Carolina. Boger went on to become head of the Department of Hospitality Management at Bethune-Cookman College. He then moved to a role as tenured professor and hospitality and tourism management department chair at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, retiring from that position in 2020. A very talented individual with a distinguished career. Meeting and working with Ernest when I did dispelled any notions I might have ever had about racial inferiority. And in the years since I have had the privilege of becoming good friends with many men and women of color.

As a young man my friends and I knew very little about the workings of the Holy Spirit, and sometimes joked about so called “holy rollers”. But in January 1970, near the peak of the Jesus Revolution, my wife and I came into contact with young people our age who were filled with the Holy Spirit and were passionate about sharing their love of Jesus Christ. We were awed by their joy and enthusiasm and decided we wanted that for ourselves. So we did as they suggested and jointly committed to following Jesus wherever he led us. God then baptized us both with his Holy Spirit and we began to manifest the fruit and the gifts of the Spirit. That led us eventually to membership in charismatic Methodist and Presbyterian churches, as well as an Assemblies of God church, where we witnessed and participated in many moves of the Spirit and learned more about what God was calling us to do with his guidance and empowerment.

As a youth my friends and I also joked about homosexuals, jokingly calling each other “queers”. It wasn’t until more recently that I came into contact with actual members of the LGBTQ community and was surprised to learn that included some of my friends and family members of other friends. Then I met a dynamic young woman about my daughter’s age who had experienced a rather traumatic childhood, having been abandoned (given up for adoption) by her birth father and mother and abused by her alcoholic foster father and mother. She developed a very strong relationship with God to overcome her circumstances and has become a passionate advocate for changing the business world by calling for individual entrepreneurs and businesses to focus on the ways in which they can make a positive contribution to society, rather than on just maximizing their profits without considering who might be negatively impacted by their actions.

She and I shared some of the same passions and we became good friends to the point that I became one of her (unofficially) adoptive fathers. It wasn’t until sometime later that I discovered she was gay when she wedded a same sex partner. I have since met her wife and have come to love them both. My own daughter and her husband have also met them and formed a bond with them.

My appreciation of the LGBTQ community reached another milestone when I helped chaperone a New Years Eve celebration for LGBTQ youth at our church, including some of our own youth members and 40 or 50 others. They were mostly very quiet and seemingly shy at first, but as midnight approached began to show more excitement and enthusiasm. We all ended up having a great time together. And a number of their parents who were there commented on how much they appreciated having a safe place for their children to enjoy themselves without fear. This party has held in the youth room of our church, which has a large sign over one of the doors declaring; “All of God’s children are welcome here’. So much for ending any homophobia.

Then a few years ago a group of men from our church were invited to a Ramadan prayer service and evening meal at an Islamic Center in Carrollton, Texas. We were welcomed ss honored guests and placed at the head table on a raised platform and our names displayed on a video screen. We attended the evening prayer service, standing quietly at the rear of the men’s section and silently praying. After that we joined with all of the congregants in a sumptuous meal. Some of us spoke briefly to express our gratitude at having been invited and our hopes for improving relationships between our communities. So much for Islamophobia. They were people with hopes and concerns for their families and community just like ours.

Most recently I have had the opportunity to meet and share with homeless people for the first time. I have participated with friends from my church and also First Presbyterian Church of Plano, along with the Streetside Showers ministry, at the Assistance Center of Collin County in Plano. Some 80 to 100 homeless persons showed up to take showers in a mobile trailer with three shower stalls, and to receive a change of clothes (shirts, pants and shoes), as well as sharing a meal provided by a rotation of local churches. Grace Presbyterian Church members provided coffee and chairs to sit in for those who wanted it. I spoke with several of those who came to receive help and learned that they were no different than anyone else I knew, except that for one reason or another they had fallen on hard times and could use a helping hand. So much for disparaging the homeless.

To summarize, God has gradually, but persistently, exposed me over the years to many people and situations I had never experienced before and knew little to nothing about. He has shown me a lot about the diversity of his creation and his desire for me to include all into my circle of love and care. And because God’s creativity is so boundless and his love so all inclusive, I am certain that he has much more to show me. I eagerly look forward to it.

When we say, “What did I do to deserve this?”, we are usually referring to something bad that we have experienced. I have had a number of those experiences myself. I have had cancers three times, losing my left eye to the first of these. I have developed atrial fibrillation and hypertension, requiring half a dozen prescription medications and several surgeries, including the implantation of a pacemaker to control these conditions. I have been out of work several times for periods of six months to a year (actually self-employment with zero income for that year). And my wife Mary died nearly six years ago leaving me a widower. I suppose I could ask, “What did I do to deserve all this?”

However, I also have a great deal to be thankful for. I am now cancer-free, I have learned to live with monocular vision for more than 30 years, and I am still reasonably fit and active. I can still drive my own car and I can walk and run (though not often) without any assistance. And when I look back over the 81 years (so far) of my life, I have much more to be thankful for. I was happily married to a charming, lovely, highly intelligent, loving and caring woman for nearly 53 years, and we shared an exciting and rewarding life of challenge, adventure and accomplishment all of those years. We had opportunities to enjoy professional careers in several different industries, including aerospace manufacturing, commercial/industrial building construction, commercial real estate, telecommunications, and university academia, as well as stints as independent consultants in marketing and career transition.

During our years together, Mary and I were able to indulge in our joint passion for travel, seeing new sights, and experiencing new cultures (and foods) in all 50 of the United States and more than 60 foreign countries around the world. We lived in a number of cities in Texas, as well as spending 9 years in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and 2 years in Virginia Beach, Virginia, meeting and becoming friends with many people in each  place. We also had opportunities to associate with people in several different Christian denominations, including Roman Catholicism, United Methodist and Charismatic Methodist churches, a Southern Baptist church, an Assemblies of God church, a Charismatic Presbyterian church, and since 1985, a PC(USA) Presbyterian church, discovering in the process that they all had the same basic Christian beliefs, although differing in more peripheral issues. In other words, they were all part of the same universal family, even though they often quarreled over different perspectives on what they considered matters of importance.

I have a delightful daughter, a wonderful son-in law and two terrific grandsons that I stay in close contact with. Since my official retirement in 2010, I have been able to offer my services on a pro bono basis to counsel people in job transition on how to find the best possible employment opportunities to do meaningful work that utilizes their talents, abilities, experience, passions, and personality, while maintaining a healthy work-life balance. A very rewarding experience for me. And I am still able to indulge in my passion for constructing and flying radio control model airplanes.

So, all in all, I have a great deal to be thankful for, and the truth is, when I ask, “What did I do to deserve this?”, the answer is emphatically “Nothing!”. I have been the recipient of God’s grace all the days of my life, in spite of my many failings and misadventures. And since grace is defined as unmerited (or undeserved) favor), I have done nothing to deserve it.

Realizing that is why when people ask me how I am doing, I now answer, “I am doing remarkably well, much better than I deserve.”

(Taken from the book of this title by Phyllis Tickle)

The Great Reformation of 500 years ago “was about the change, politically, in Western governance from fiefdoms, baronies, and hereditary domains to the nation-state configuration that for most of the last five centuries has informed the Western way of ordering life”

“The Great Reformation, economically, was about…birthing, and then enabling capitalism as a dominant characteristic of Western ways…The Great Reformation was also about a world that, in order to communicate its new ways and profit from them, abruptly needed a literate population for commercial reasons.”

“The Great Reformation was also concerned with the discoveries being made in the physical universe and, as a result, of human ability to begin to pierce, penetrate, understand, manipulate, and even in some ways change or harness the power for the betterment of mankind”

“The Great Reformation was about a whole shopping list of things, every one of them part and parcel of who we are and what our society for the last five centuries has been.”

And “religion, whether we like it or not, is intimately tied to the culture in which it exists… Just as surely as one of the functions of religion is to inform, counsel, and temper the society in which it exists, just so surely is every religion informed and colored by its hosting society”

Now we are in another time of transition, one that is having as great an effect on society and religion as the Great Reformation. It is known as the Great Emergence. And the Christianity that is now emerging is quite different that which emerged from the Great Reformation.

According to a recent Barna survey these are the five top responses to the question of why people are beginning to doubt Christian beliefs and, as a result, leaving Christian churches and becoming self-styled spiritual, but not religious people.
• The hypocrisy of religious people (42%)
• Science (31%)
• Human suffering (30%)
• One religion can’t have all the answers (29%)
• Conflict in the world (24%)

In other words, people are abandoning organized religion as it exists today because they do not see that it understands scientific realities, is unwilling to examine other possibilities than its preconceived opinions and is failing to address human suffering in the form of racism, poverty and outright intolerance of people that are not like themselves, often resulting in physical conflict.

This is obviously a far cry from what God birthed the church to be, a loving, caring, accepting body of people who invited one and all to join them, and who took measures to ensure that everyone’s needs were met. So God is once again stirring the waters of human society and religion to flush out the detrimental aspects of both and to usher in a new era of human relations that more closely resembles the kingdom of God on Earth.

As Phyllis Tickle pointed out in “The Great Emergence” in the five hundred or so years since the Great Reformation North American Christianity has evolved into four, roughly equal groups or categories to form a diagram called a quadrilateral.

What is happening as God stirs the waters is a blurring of lines between the four sectors, with the result being a gathering center. Where there were once very distinct segments of Christianity whose leaders seldom spoke to one another, much less tried to understand the other’s point of view, the advent of the world wide web and the burgeoning social media exposed the people in the pews to a great variety of differing opinions and they began to wonder if they still had all of the answers to the burning issues arising in the society in which they lived.

In the center of the quadrilateral, “where the four corners of the segments had met, now there was s swirling center , its centripetal force racing from quadrant to quadrant in ever-widening circles, picking up ideas and people from each, sweeping the into the center, mixing them there, and then spewing them forth into a new way of being Christian, a new way of being Church”

So what are the basic characteristics of Emergence Christianity?

• Radical obedience to the words and teaching of Jesus Christ as recorded in Scripture and as received, during discernment, prayer, and teachings, into their own beingness
• Insistence that the Bible tells one story in the Old and New Testaments, so there is a respectful connection between Judaism and Christianity
• Willing susceptibility to the power and truth of story, but suspicion of propositional truth and especially of doctrinal and/or dogmatic exegesis.
• Belief that theology as a conversation is something to be used as a means, not an end.
• To always opt for grace over morality
• To be entirely persuaded that orthopraxy, or right action, trumps orthodoxy, or right belief, every time
• To know above and beyond all else, that the Bible story tells us that there is a kingdom, that it is now and not yet, here and also there, come and coming and then, knowing this, to live every minute of every day accordingly

(Taken from the book of this title by Phyllis Tickle)
The Right Reverend Mark Dyer has observed that “the only way to understand what is currently happening to us as twenty-first- century Christians in North America is first to understand that about every five hundred years the Church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale.”

“That is, about every five hundred years the empowered structure of institutional Christianity, whatever they may be at that time, become an intolerable carapace that must be shattered in order that renewal and growth may occur. When that mighty upheaval happens, history shows us, there are always at least three consistent results of corollary events.”

“First, a new and more vital form of Christianity does indeed emerge.
Second, the organized expression of Christianity, which up until then had been the dominant one is reconstituted into a more pure and less ossified expression of its former self.”

“The third result is of equal, if not greater, significance though. That is, every time the incrustations of an overly established Christianity have been broken open, the faith has spread-and been spread – dramatically into new geographic and demographic areas, thereby increasing exponentially the range and depth of Christianity’s reach as a result of its time of unease and distress.”

So what we are witnessing today is the cracking open of the carapace (hard shell) of religious doctrines that have caused so much strife and divisiveness in Christian churches to allow for repentance (change of mindset), renewal and growth of understanding of formerly taboo subjects. That is, God is calling the Church to learn to see things from the divine point of view, rather than from our preconceived and narrow perspectives.

History shows us that Dyer is correct in stating that this occurs about once every five hundred years. Those of us in the reformed tradition are fond of celebrating the Great Reformation of the sixteenth century, five hundred years before our time. The Protestant tradition arose from this time, resulting in significant changes to the then extant structure of the Church.

Five hundred years before that, in 1054, the Great Schism occurred, dividing the Church between Greek and/or Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Both of these segments flourished in their respective spheres of influence.

Five hundred years before the Great Schism came the fall of the Roman Empire and the elevation of Gregory I, who became know as Gregory the Great because of his work in “leading a continent that was in total upheaval into some kind of ecclesio-political coherence and…{guiding} Christianity firmly into the monasticism that would protect preserve, and characterize it during the next five centuries.”

As Phyllis Tickle says: “When Christians despair of the upheavals and reformations that have been the history of our faith – when the faithful resist, as so many do just now, the presence of another time of reconfiguration with its inevitable pain- we all would do well to remember that, not only are we in the hinge of a five-hundred-year period, but we are also the direct product of one.”

‘It is especially important,” she says” to remember that no standing form of organized Christian faith has ever been destroyed by one of our semi-millennial eruptions. Instead, each has simply lost hegemony or pride of place to the new and not-yet organized form that was birthing.”

Tickle continues: “Christianity became a global religion as a result of the Great Reformation. A large part of that globalization was in direct consequence of Protestantism’s adamant insistence on literacy, which in turn led more or less directly to the technology that enabled world exploration and trade. As a result, Catholics and Protestants alike could, and did, carry Christianity out of Europe and into the world beyond, often in strenuous – and energizing – competition with each other.”

Unfortunately, the Church that Protestantism and Catholicism spread to other continents was largely colonialized in nature, treating the natives of those continents as subjects, or worse as slaves, with all the negative consequences and resentments that fosters. This was manifested in the United States in the 19th century as the country and its churches were sharply divided over the issue of slavery. The result was the secession of the southern states leading to the Civil War and to the split between northern and southern branches of Christian denominations.

Although the country was reunited following the end of the war and many, if not most, denominations have since reunified, lingering resentments and attempts to nullify the effects of ending slavery continue to this day.

More recently both the country and the churches are increasingly at odds once again, this time along staunch liberal and conservative lines, over issues such as systemic poverty and institutional racism, as well as immigration policy and the LGBTQ community, especially over same sex marriage and the ordination of gays. And this is not just in the United States, as racism, intolerance, subjugation, and resultant poverty are rampant in all corners of the globe.

All is not lost though. As Tickle concludes: One does not have to be particularly gifted as a seer these days, however, to perceive the Great Emergence already swirling like balm across that wound, bandaging it with genuinely egalitarian conversation and with an undergirding assumption of shared brotherhood and sisterhood in a world being redeemed.”

So be aware that it’s time for another rummage sale. It has already begun and will continue until a new and better form of Christianity emerges, one that more closely represents the kingdom of God on earth.