By Norris Burkes Dec 29 2024 As I work though the 23rd year of this column, I will confess that column writing isn’t always an easy gig. It sometimes requires walking a fine line between expressing what I really think or simply spouting what entertains my reader. As every columnist can testify, strong opinions can
By Norris Burkes Dec 22 2024 This is the time of year when writers like to recount their “Best Christmas ever.” Their stories often include a video of a slobbering puppy leaping from a ribbon-covered box or a marriage proposal, or my favorite, a deployed soldier surprising her family with an early homecoming. But if
By Norris Burkes, Dec 15 2024 If anyone has ever tried to convince you to get religion, change religion, or even lose your religion, then you’ll probably relate to this column. In the early 1980s I was attending Golden Gate Seminary, just outside San Francisco, when I went to work as an advertising intern for
Chaplain Dale Swan and wife Jill By Norris Burkes Dec 8 2024 This week, I’m very happy to announce the 65th birthday of my good friend Dale Swan. Yes, he’s still alive, despite the wishes of his wife Jill. No, wait. That sounds bad. Jill and Dale are a very fit and happy couple, so
Thanksgiving 2024 As I built a post-election gratitude list and remembered a question routinely asked by the minister of music in a church I pastored. He’d stand behind the big Baptist pulpit and ask this question of his sleepy and aging congregation: “Would you rather be in the best prison in America or here in
By Norris Burkes Nov 24, 2023 If you’ve been watching the news, then you know that the world is going to end soon. No, I’m not talking about the recent election. I’m referring to the elusive deep-water oarfish. Superstitious sailors have long considered the spotting of this rare fish a harbinger of bad news. And
By Norris Burkes Nov 17 2024 “Do you think you’ll ever fully retire?” my wife, Becky asks a few times a month. “Definitely! “Mostly. “Maybe?” I say, adding an I-dunno-know for good measure. She asks, because she knows I struggle sometimes to write this weekly syndicated column, travel to speak in different venues, and pastor
By Norris Burkes Nov 10 2024 This Veterans Day, I want you to do more than just thank a veteran for his or her service. As a veteran of 28 years, I want to challenge you to go beyond patriotic rhetoric by asking some specific questions of the veterans you encounter. First, ask us what
By Norris Burkes Nov 3 2024 Tell me, did you have a frightening Halloween? Were you visited by a slew of goblins and ghosts? If you thought that day was frightening, brace yourselves. Election Day comes this Tuesday and a good many of us are absolutely terrified by how our new president may exert their
By Norris Burkes Oct 20, 2024 Long before the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, I too imagined a day off work of fun and frivolity. After all, who hasn’t feigned illness to take a day off from work? This was my self-justifying question as I called the Baylor University Bookstore one Friday morning in
By Norris Burkes October 13 2024 Earlier this month, I celebrated my 67th birthday with a couple of pieces of German chocolate cake. Fortunately, experience told me not to go for a third. That’s because I still remember my seventh birthday when I sneaked a half-dozen cupcakes from my mom’s cake carrier, devoured them
By Norris Burkes Oct 6, 2024 Last Sunday, I admitted to my Nevada City congregation that I sometimes, feel like the man who had had enough with life’s difficulties, so he went to live in a monastery. The abbot restricted the man’s spoken words to only two words every year. After his first year, he
