The next time you watch a commercial on television, count how many different camera shots you see in 30-seconds. What you’ll discover is that in that 30-second commercial, you’ll count between 8 and 15 different camera shots, and in many commercials more than 20! A different picture, a different camera angle, a different happy, smiling…
Like most people, I suppose, throughout my life, there have been many times when confusion, or doubt, or wondering, or just not being absolutely sure about some decision I had to make caused me to worry. Once, when I was debating in my mind the wisdom of buying a particular car, I called my dad…
The other day, I stood on our back deck and noticed the lovely sky; I watched as an azure sky kept changing its mind, as if it were trying to decide what shade of blue it needed to wear for the day. I marveled as I watched it dissolve from one color of blue into…
In the evenings at our house, we always try to sit down at the table and have dinner together. My wife is very faithful to plan meals and prepare them. She’s almost always the cook. (Oh, sometimes, if I go fishin’ and catch a few, I’ll clean the fish when I get home, and fry…
I don’t think I know anyone who aspires to be ‘ordinary.’ Lots of people view their lives as ordinary, for sure. But I don’t think many people set out in their lives to actually ‘live’ that way. Most of us have aspirations and longings for significance. We’d love to do something extraordinary. THE SUN…
I saw something, yesterday, as I sat in my blue chair over by the window. While looking up and thinking about something I cannot now recall, I saw something … waving silently, high and near the top of our vaulted ceiling. I hadn’t noticed it before, perhaps because it was wispy, fine as one of…
When my wife makes soup, (and I do my best to get her to make soup as often as possible,) our house is filled with the smell of wonderful seasonings and flavors. When I come home and open the door and the aroma of that soup greets my senses, I smile inside knowing soup is…
I sat reading in a coffee house the other day. I was totally engaged in my book, and the wonderful coffee I sipped, when the atmosphere of my quiet surroundings changed rather abruptly. A cry. A plaintive wailing began in the corner of the coffee house across from where I sat. A baby was making…
Like most families, I suppose, at our house, we’ve got lots of pictures of our kids when they were growing up. Some of those pictures are hanging on our walls. But, my wife has been really good at gathering pictures into albums, even organizing them by year so we can occasionally sit on the couch…
One of the most noteworthy moments in the life of any human being, I think, is oddly enough one that none of us can remember. If someone asked you to describe the day you took your first ‘steps,’ you’d be hard-pressed to come up with that moment or what was going on in your mind…