Author: Stan Escott

Holy Week – Fresh and New

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Here we are in the midst of Holy Week, that important time for the Christian Church between Passion or Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday.  A solemn time, commemorating the events of Christ’s journey to the Cross and the Easter Sunday celebration of the Resurrection.

We listen to readings from Matthew or Luke recounting the arrival of Christ in Jerusalem, and the growing fear on the part of the Pharisees leading to an assassination plot.  Symbolically, we join fellow Christians and Jews in the Passover or the Last Supper, the ceremony of the Seder on Maundy Thursday. Continue reading

What’s on Your Kindle?

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What is on your Kindle (Nook, iPod, etc.)?  Isn’t it surprising how we accumulate books – books read, sampled, referenced, unfinished?  What does the array of titles tell us about who we are?  You don’t need to be an analyst to see patterns.

I took a chance… I inventoried my Kindle and, while I was not surprised, I was a taken back a bit.  I have 62 books on my device and 70 more I have archived.  Where did I find time for all that?  The 62 on my Kindle are probably more telling than all those I archived.  Continue reading

Poverty and We

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How many of us really know what it is like to be deep in poverty?  Where hunger lurks just over your shoulder, and feeding your children often requires that you park your dignity at a door where you never quite get it back?  Have you stood in a grocery line with a young family in front of you and observed the agony (or is it defeat?) of the young mother sorting through food stamps?  Can you imagine the grinding, harsh reality that there is never enough and that too many people, worldwide and in this country, go through on a daily basis? Continue reading

What Is a Heifer?

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For a good number of years my wife and me had the most satisfying volunteer experience of our lives…We served as a volunteer (“Vol”) at Heifer International Learning Center at Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Ark.  We did not know what we were getting into when we first stopped at the Ranch for a visit with a friend who was already a “Vol”.   We had just spent a few weeks vacationing and had explored vacation rentals on the Gulf.  It took us just one day at the Ranch to convince us that we didn’t need to spend another winter on a beach or golf course somewhere, with its superficial elements of satisfaction, when we could be of service to a very important mission…addressing the issue of hunger and poverty in this world, including the U.S. Continue reading

Hot Wheels, Love and Giving

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In Rachel Remen’s book “My Grandfather’s Blessings” she tells of playing Hot Wheels with her 6-year-old nephew, Kenny.  Kenny had two of the little cars and they had a great time with imaginary traffic events, and crashes, and drives along the cliff edge, the window sill.   An oil company’s promotion of giving away Hot Wheels for gas purchases allowed Rachel and her friends to present Kenny with a box of every model of the cars. Continue reading

Disappointment in

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When I was a younger man, one of the things I liked about golf is the feeling that I got when I have a really good round!  One of the things I didn’t like about golf was the feeling that I got when I have a really bad round after a really good one.  My expectations were thwarted and I was DISAPPOINTED!  Now I am much older (and wiser?) and, while I still like golf, I am seldom more than momentarily disappointed in my game.  Missed putt, yes.  Wayward drive, yes.  But I’ll still play.  I say that if you don’t like disappointments, maybe golf isn’t your game! Continue reading

Fear, Love and an Angel

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As I write this blog a friend, I’ll call her Mary, is going through a double mastectomy.  I can’t imagine what Mary has been going through these past days right up to this day and this moment.  Even with a heart attack and nine surgeries of my own, including part replacements, I cannot get my mind around the impact that this surgery will have on Mary.  She is strong, and on the outside she will be who she was, but this procedure takes away so much and will be a measure of who she is on the inside.  I have faith and confidence that Mary will overcome and recover. Continue reading

Just When You Aren’t Expecting It – A Nudge from the Past

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The following scribbling was written about 1970 in my “den”, a 1955 Yellowstone travel trailer.  “The Unfamiliar” has survived three moves and a lot more on the back of a Terry Andréa State Park map (Wisconsin).  Funny how you write something in one set of emotions, then decades later read it and you recapture the feelings of that moment, if only for a moment.   Peace…aloneness… joy…sadness… uncertainty…  A composite of conflicting emotions, now history, but, for that moment, very real. Continue reading

Waiting for Spring

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The beautiful tulips that has adorned my blog header recently was there to remind us that sometime (months from now?) the snow will be gone and the beauty of the sleeping world will take center stage.   I am reminded of a line from Bette Midler’s hit “The Rose” which speaks of  new growth under all the snow that will come alive with spring and get all showy with blooms.  Something to think about for all us “cabin fever” sufferers. Continue reading

What Does That Mean?

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Are you a literalist when it comes to the Christian Bible?  Does a friend challenge you that the King James Version is the only “true” translation of Holy scripture when you are reading from the NIV or perhaps the Living Bible?  Do you bristle when someone says to you that the Bible is just a book of stories?   Or maybe when a friend tells you that Jesus was just one of several good teachers at that time? Continue reading

Whatever is Unjust…

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Whatever is untrue, whatever is unholy, whatever is unjust, whatever is ugly, whatever is of ill repute, whatever is vicious, whatever is cowardly, whatever is unfair…write of these things, speak of these things, think of these things, instill in the minds of others all these things.

These seem to be the watchwords or stocks in trade of the media, of our political landscape, of stress between peoples.    Discrimination, racism, sexism, and all other  “ism”s that subtly, and not so subtly, work their way into our awareness and cling to narrow and literal definitions of “Christian”, while forsaking the core of Christianity – love. Continue reading