The Tipping Point was Malcolm Gladwell’s debut book in 2000 and the first of several best sellers. It probed the forces behind societal change and proposed to explain “how little things can make a big difference” (the book’s sub-title). For example, Gladwell popularized the broken-window theory. This theory says that when a window in a buildingContinue reading “Growing a Greater Vision of God”
Category Archives: Read About It
The Rush to Publish
The Supreme Court concluded their term yesterday with several important rulings. Accordingly, a large number of media was there including NPR’s long time legal correspondent, Nina Totenberg. It was not a good day for her. As you may have heard, she erroneously reported that Judge Samuel Alito was retiring. He isn’t. What happened was asContinue reading “The Rush to Publish”
The Continuing Challenge of Change
Toward the end of Les Miserables Inspector Javert, the thorough going man of law and order for whom no grey area is possible, has his life saved by Jean Valjean—the man he has been pursuing for a decade. To make matters worse, Valjean then surrenders himself to Javert and to everyone’s astonishment (including his own), JavertContinue reading “The Continuing Challenge of Change”
War of the Worlds
War of the Worlds was written by H. G. Wells in 1898. Though it hardly raises an eyebrow by today’s standards, it was pretty heady stuff then. England was at the height of its imperialism and creatures from another planet would be considered about the only qualified candidates to take down the Empire. Scientists were speculatingContinue reading “War of the Worlds”
The Joy of Sharing
As the Joad family travels to California as part of the great migration westward during the 1930’s in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, there’s a scene that takes place in a diner on Route 66. A man and his two sons shuffle in. Their time on the road has left them dirty and disheveled. The manContinue reading “The Joy of Sharing”
The Wounds of Love
Oscar Wilde wrote a story for children (and children at heart), called The Selfish Giant. The story is about a giant who returns from a visit with an ogre to find his garden (yard) overrun with children from the neighborhood. Being the selfish giant that he is, he angrily banishes them from the garden and buildsContinue reading “The Wounds of Love”
The Possible Dream
Miguel Cervantes is known to us for writing what is considered the first modern novel, Don Quixote. The Spanish writer was born in the mid-sixteenth century and from what we are able to reconstruct of his life, it was as interesting and colorful as the characters he wrote about. Cervantes was one of seven children. HisContinue reading “The Possible Dream”
When God Owns Your History
Although lupus took her life at the age of thirty-nine, Flannery O’Connor wrote two novels and thirty-two short stories that garnered several awards and honors. She was a Roman Catholic and made no secret about it or apologies for it (“I write the way I do because I am a Catholic”). Due to her illnessContinue reading “When God Owns Your History”
Of Hope and Healing
When we think about our military personnel in combat situations (wherever that might be), we know they’re in tough circumstances. War makes for that. More than a century and half ago, our country knew not just war—but an internal one, which at times, pitted neighbor against neighbor. There are even records of families that had members fightingContinue reading “Of Hope and Healing”
Discipled Lives
Santiago is an elderly fisherman who hasn’t caught anything in almost three months in Hemingway’s classic, The Old Man and the Sea. Things are so bad that Manolin, his young apprentice, has been forbidden by his parents from fishing with him. They want him to go out with the more successful fisherman. It’s a dejected and desperate manContinue reading “Discipled Lives”
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 