Month: September 2014

  • The Letter

    The Letter

      A woman called me once, a woman I had met only one time at a reading I did in Oregon. I don't even remember her name now but she had a dream she wanted to share with me. She said Karly Sheehan appeared to[..]
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  • Good Reads

    Good Reads

    Some book recommendations. Y'all feel free to share your own...   The NFL has been making headline news as of late, and not at all in a good way. Which is something Matthew "The Rocket" Rising knows all too well. One of the best quarterbacks[..]
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  • Our Righteous Wars

    Our Righteous Wars

      Maybe you've seen the video going viral of the Marines singing the worship song Days of Elijah? It's been going around my Facebook page with the headline Holy Spirit takes over Oorah-style.  The script that follows speaks to America's "innate reliance upon God." For[..]
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  • Adrian Peterson: Celebrity Abuse

    Adrian Peterson: Celebrity Abuse

      I cannot explain Elizabeth Hasselbeck or her analogy comparing NFL's domestic violence scandals with the Obama administration's handling of the September 11, 2012 terror attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. All I can say is God bless her little pea-picking heart. But[..]
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  • Letter to Urban Outfitters

    Letter to Urban Outfitters

      Dear Urban Outfitters: I was nine years old in 1966 when my father, Staff Sgt. David P. Spears, was killed in Vietnam Ia Drang Valley. I can't tell you all the ways in which his death altered the course of our lives, individually, and[..]
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  • Lessons from Muscle Shoals

    Lessons from Muscle Shoals

    Muscle Shoals. I'd venture to say most Americans of a certain age, that is to say those of us old enough to remember Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers, have heard of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Muscle Shoals is one of those iconic southern towns that beckons[..]
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  • Cold River of Sorrow

    Cold River of Sorrow

    [caption id="attachment_1028" align="aligncenter" width="633"] I took the girls to Hawaii in Sept. 2001 for their high school graduation present. We'd spent 10 days reliving the history of life with my father and the impact of war. On our last morning in Hawaii we woke to[..]
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  • Spiritual Refugees

    Spiritual Refugees

    I keep thinking about the families. The ones caught up in the Driscoll/MarsHill debacle. I read the news stories, the blog posts, the Twitter feed. I take note of the wise-cracks, the I-told-you-sos, the self-righteous parading about, and I can't help but think about Mark[..]
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  • Help a Veteran

    Help a Veteran

        For the past year I have been traveling with a disabled veteran back and forth to the VA hospital in Boise, Idaho. This veteran lives in a remote area of Oregon, which makes Boise the nearest VA hospital for him. This complicates things,[..]
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  • Don’t Apologize for Men

    Don’t Apologize for Men

        I've seen it too much in my lifetime. Women, red-faced, shamed, apologizing. Not for wrongs they have done. But for the wrongs their husbands, their sons, their brothers, their fathers, their bosses have inflicted. Why do we do that? Apologize for men. Own the[..]
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