Sweet Spots

All ideas come from someplace else. Take “Fantasia.” “Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) wrote about an apprentice who copied a sorcerer’s spell, but didn’t quite get it right. Using the spell, he charged his broom to replace him in the drudgeries of apprenticeship, including the task of carrying water. Things got out…

While Henry Ford was on vacation in Dublin, Ireland, three priests asked him to make contributions to their new orphanage. Ford was receptive and wrote a check for 2000 pounds. The next day the headline in the small town newspaper announced that Ford had given 20,000 pounds. The priests hurried…

“Does My Life Make Any Sense” I am haunted by a newspaper story. It told of a young secretary who, one day during her lunch hour, climbed out on the edge of the building in which she was working and announced her intentions to jump. Life, at least hers, had…

A man complained about his wife who he believed had never changed the toilet tissue roll since they had been married. He got so mad that he started writing the date and time on every cardboard cylinder he changed. One day he had had enough and in his frustration he…

Time Resets on Sunday 01 November 2015. Want a creative idea for doing this as a community? A Baptist Church in Abilene, Texas handles the spring-forward, fall-back time change problem in a way that doesn’t inconvenience non-church attenders. This church doesn’t change anything until everyone is at church in the…

“From the outside, church congregations can look like remarkably contentious places, full of hypocrites who talk about love while fighting each other tooth and nail. This is the reason many people give for avoiding them. On the inside, however, it is a different matter, a matter of struggling to maintain…

When Jack Stotts was the President of McCormick Seminary, something happened that he told in a speech on unity and inclusivity: McCormick Seminary had just relocated to the south side of Chicago to become part of a rich ecumenical cluster of theological schools. One day Bill Guindon, the president of…

A gas thief thought he had struck gold at an RV park in Seattle. He found a motorhome where no one was around. So he siphoned the tank. Unfortunately, he drew up out of the tank not gasoline but raw sewage. The RV owner decided not to press charges. Each…

A cartoon in The New Yorker shows a doctor walking towards a sick patient. The doctor says, “Good news, Mr. Figby! The insurance company says you’re well.” Saying so doesn’t make it so. Even when the “saying” is done by the authorities.

In 1803, a British civil service job was created. A watchman was told to stand on the Cliffs of Dover with a spyglass. It was an important job. He was to look across the English Channel toward France. When he saw Napoleon coming, he was to ring an alarm bell…