Category: Four Minute Read

I was the first person in my family to graduate high school. As I prepared for that momentous day, the guidance counselor (whom I had never met) summoned me to her office. She told me I had made the highest grade on the American College […]

I have been too many things to count. I have been a twinkle in the eye of a sixteen-year-old boy. I have been a sperm fast and true and thus a firstborn. I have been dirt poor and filthy rich. I have eaten moldy bread […]

 Family is NOT everything. That is sentimental bullshit. But family is something. For many of us, today is filled with nostalgic memories of a gentler, kinder time—of family members once dear to us now lost to death, divorce, or estrangement. Memories of a life without […]

Lipton was famous for these ten interview questions on Inside the Actors Studio. He always asked the same ten questions to the nearly 300 guests who appeared on the show. I posed them to Gina during cocktail hour last night. As we discussed them I […]

It is impossible to overstate the cost of leaving the Christian faith. Departing my belief system has been devastating. Almost ten years later, I still experience intense anger and inception-like dreams about the abuse of growing up in a world of lies. I feel robbed […]

The past year has been the most enjoyable of my life. This despite the political chaos, the pandemic, the care of an elderly parent, and continued estrangement from my children and grandchildren. It begs the question, why? It was nine years ago this week when […]

I’ve never been one to shy away from controversy and candid observations, so here goes. And I enjoy the freedom of having broken the chains of family, cultural, and religious censorship—so I can honestly and publicly say whatever I feel. Imagine that! For the first […]

This is not an experience for kids. It’s for adults. Particularly those of us lucky enough to have survived the first part of life. For much of human history—and still in most of the world today—people of our age were usually dead. But today’s increasing […]

I remember crying and running from the room as the small black and white television in my grandmother’s home beamed a fuzzy rendition of men beating each other to a pulp on “Live Wrestling.” The year was around 1963 and I was five years old. […]

In the past three decades over five million white adults have left the church. These stark numbers come from recent surveys by Pew and National Opinion Research. Five million. Evangelicals have represented a huge majority of the American population throughout history and in 1991, white […]