There's a ritual my friend's grandparents practiced every New Year's Eve. At midnight, they'd open the front door in their house to "let the old year out." When he told me this, I laughed and…
JOY
Merry Christmas! - it's amazing the joy that simply saying those two words can bring. But what does that one word, Joy, really mean? For most of us, our Christmas memories, experiences, or expectations are…
A GIFT FOR THE GOD WHO HAS (IS)…
Some years ago, I remember going out to dinner with my Mom and Dad on a Saturday Night after Mass. In a quick move, I grabbed the check from the waiter to pay for the…
“…THE LIGHT ANSWERS”
Growing up, my Jewish friends and I would invariably get into the annual "Who's got the Better Holiday" competition between Hanukkah and Christmas around this time. They would share extraordinary stories of how, during the…
PROPHETIC VOICES
Forecasts, predictions, prophecies. We can treat all of those words as basically the same things - telling us what will happen. The meteorologist on the weather channel gives us the 7-day forecast of temperatures, the…
TOO BIG TO FAIL
While it may have been used before, the phrase "too big to fail" wasn't as familiar to most individuals until 2007-2008. That's when the Banks in the United States and around the world found themselves…