I’ll never forget where I was on September 11, 2001. My wife and I were in our second year of marriage, and we were living in Louisville, Kentucky while I was working on my Ph.D. On the morning of the attacks, I had a seminar later that day, and I was in our apartment when she called me from her work to tell me to turn the television on. I think both buildings had already been struck by the time I tuned in, but I was watching live television as the towers eventually crumbled to the ground. Americans were horrified by what we saw that day. As the flames engulfed…
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PBS Profile of My Hometown — DeRidder, LA
The PBS affiliate in Louisiana has produced a profile of my hometown of DeRidder, LA. It is like a love letter to the place where I was born and raised. They found so much of what is beautiful and good about DeRidder. I already miss it, but this makes me miss it all the more. You can watch below.
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Nate Magloughlin (1976-2026)
A few weeks ago, my old friend Nate posted on his Caring Bridge site that he was going into hospice. I’ve known Nate for about 25 years, all the way back to our days as students at Southern Seminary. Our wives were both singers and became sweet friends on the worship team at our church. Our roads have long since taken us in different directions–mine to professoring and pastoring in Louisville, Ky and his to being pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Amarillo, TX for nearly 20 years. But over these last three years, he’s been in an all-out fist fight with advanced stage cancer. On March 6, he posted…
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A Piece of My Childhood Goes up in a Cinder
The picture you see above is something that happened in my hometown yesterday. To most people, I’m sure this looks merely like an old building that has just burned, but for me it’s so much more than that. It’s also a precious piece of my childhood going up in a cinder. This building was for many years the old Uptown Newsstand, owned and run by Mr. Johnny McDaniel. If Norman Rockwell ever painted a picture of a Newstand and its owner, it would look like Uptown and Mr. Johnny. I rode my bike there religiously every week for comic books and —when I had enough money left over — Delaware…
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The Morning of My Years
I first heard Allen Levi sing “Morning of My years” when I was in my twenties. The song is about turning forty. After hearing the lyrics for the first time, I remember hoping that this would be my perspective when it came time for me to turn that page. And now that I’ve turned that page some years ago, I still think about this song every year at my birthday. It meant a lot to me then, and it still does now. It represents hopefulness for the grace to age like wine and not like milk. Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner. The song first appeared on an album…
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A Shooting and a Harrowing Night in Washington, D. C.
Every year in September, I take my pastoral interns to a pastor’s conference in Washington, D.C. Every year, we stay on Capitol Hill in the home of some friends and very gracious hosts. This year’s trip was just this past weekend. For reasons that have nothing to do with the conference, our visit was unlike any I’ve ever experienced before. On Saturday night a little after 10pm, there was a shooting outside the home in which we were staying. Two of my interns were upstairs and heard the shots. Five of us downstairs watching football didn’t hear anything. One of the interns upstairs (whose name is Chris) also heard someone…
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The Real Weezer: Rest in Peace
Many of you will recognize the name “Weezer” from the 1989 movie Steel Magnolias, a film about the special bond shared among a group of small-town Southern women and how they cope with the death of one of their own. Many will also remember that Shirley MacLaine turned in a performance of a lifetime in her depiction of the endearing curmudgeon, Weezer Boudreaux. What many people don’t know is that the movie was inspired by a true story. Playwriter Robert Harling wrote Steel Magnolias after the untimely death of his own sister Susan. Like the movie, Susan had a group of women who were a part of her life and…
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Farewell, Charlie Brown Christmas
“A Charlie Brown Christmas” was an annual fixture of my childhood. For me, this special and “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” were two highlights of the Christmas season. Those were the days when there were only three broadcast channels and before people had VCR’s. You couldn’t record it to watch at your leisure. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” came on once a year, and if you missed it, you’d have to wait an entire year for another opportunity to see it. You had to “check your local listings” to know when it would be on, and then you made an appointment to plant yourself in front of the television to watch the…
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You have no enemies, you say?
YOU have no enemies, you say? Alas! my friend, the boast is poor; He who has mingled in the fray Of duty, that the brave endure, Must have made foes! If you have none, Small is the work that you have done. You’ve hit no traitor on the hip, You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip, You’ve never turned the wrong to right, You’ve been a coward in the fight. -Charles Mackay, English Chartist poet, 1814–1889
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My Hometown of DeRidder in the Aftermath of Laura
Last week, I wrote about Hurricane Laura as it bore down on my hometown of DeRidder, Louisiana. None of us knew then exactly what path the storm would take, but it turns out that the eye of the storm passed right over my childhood home. As the dust settled on Thursday, it became really clear that our little town was devastated. In fact, the federal government has designated our city as a disaster area. My parents have been taking care of my aged aunt who has been having extreme difficulties that have rendered her unable to walk or care for herself. For that reason, they had decided to ride the…
