It’s football time in Tennessee, especially on Friday nights when the lights are on our local high school teams. For so many of us former players, the pregame preparations, pageantry and the hard-fought battles of Friday nights were the highlights of our high school years. Through it all, we met long-time friends and learned life lessons that still resonate in our adult years. I reminisced about playing football in the Stone Castle at Tennessee High in Bristol after watching the film Friday Night Lights. Starring Billy Bob Thornton as head coach Gary Gaines, the film portrays the personal and collective struggles of the 1988 Permian Panthers, a high school team…
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Why the best days are ordinary days
Ordinary time. According to The United Methodist Book of Worship, Ordinary Time is the “Season after Pentecost,” beginning the day after Pentecost and ending the day before the First Sunday of Advent. As I write this blog post, we are in the midst of Ordinary Time. Yet, it hardly seems ordinary at all. In the U.S., the Republicans and Democrats have completed their national conventions, and for the next three months, we will hear fierce, negative attacks against each party’s presidential, state and local candidates. Brutal attacks on innocent people around the world continue to make the nightly news, especially when the innocent people are our neighbors or the law…
