Several years ago I was in Burlington, N.C., and needed a place to spend a couple of hours while my daughter was in a meeting at Elon University. Someone recommended a little coffee shop on the main street past the campus. There was, they told me, a comfortable place to sit and read my book. […]
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(Note to readers: I have changed the original title of this piece to emphasize the point of my article. You are encouraged to read it again and think with me about this and similar commonalities or needs that might help us to create peace between us and the Middle East.) A few days ago […]
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Look at Those Fish By Emmett Barnes In the early part of the 1970s my wife, LaNell, and I started working closely with Pastor Fuad Shorrosh in the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon. I took a lighter responsibility at the Arab Baptist Seminary in Beirut so that we could move to Baalbek in 1974. This meant […]
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My last blog promised that on January 4 I would tell you about my plan for “carrying on” my effort to be a positive influence in this violent world. And here it is. This is an invitation to you, a regular or occasional reader of my blog. I want to encourage you to write […]
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2015 is gone! I am tempted to say, Praise God, al hamdulilla, good riddance. In 2015 my husband was sick, I was exhausted and stressed and trying to keep appointments, when I discovered I was not superwoman and got hauled off to the ER myself. A few months later, expecting to return home the next […]
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Yesterday our topic was What Not to Do in Response to the Attacks on Paris and Beirut. Reading that blog first, will make this one more meaningful. As yesterday, my ideas are organized as a list. 1.Stop talking Sit down, take several deep breaths, drink a cup of coffee or tea, whatever makes you […]
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We are responding. All of us in some way are reacting to the shaking of our world. I happen to be a list-maker, especially when the world is shaking. This is how I get a measure of control over my own emotions and actions. I am not any smarter than you are. But in […]
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When we were mere teenagers, my sister Joyce and I were sitting in a theater watching a war movie. Several soldiers moved forward into a battle, while others stayed behind in a trench, listening and watching. There was an explosion, a lot of smoke. One of those in the trench observed sadly, “Somebody got it,” […]
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What a breath of fresh air in the news from Lebanon! The Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Beirut, Elias Audi, has declared that there is no such thing as holy war, and his stand represents other leaders of his church. The Archbishop’s statement, on October 19, was intended to distance the Lebanese Orthodox Church from the […]
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Fareed Zakaria said on CNN on October 18 that decades from now we will be glad that Barack Obama refrained from a more active role in Syria. Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post on Oct 5 wrote that Obama is right to be cautious about choosing friends in Syria and right to pursue a […]
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