After exposing my cluttered garage and pontificating about disposing of unused stuff, I had to act; otherwise, I wouldn’t be an authentic 52 Stepper. Even though I proclaimed the virtue of giving things to those who could use them, my immediate motivations were to show you I could do as I say, escape the yoke of unused possessions, and spare

Despite our awareness that we benefit by forgiving others and ourselves, we deny ourselves by surrendering control over our forgiveness decisions.   Them Often, our most significant stumbling block to forgiving others is making it contingent on the offender’s remorse; “I will not forgive him until he apologizes.” However, requiring repentance is the equivalent of asking permission to be relieved of

Send Them Back We both praise and vilify the country’s leader for doing the job our laws require.  Ironically, the deportation zealots would have been better off drafting President Obama back into office.  In both terms, he deported (removed and returned) more illegals than the current President did in his original term.  Why didn’t President Obama suffer the same outrage?

For those unaware, this type of message is an invitation to contemplate, not an assault on my dear readers.  When I use “we,” I refer to a segment of or our entire society.  I understand that not everyone belongs to the group I am referring to. Selective Interpretation We argue the Second Amendment right to bear arms extends to openly

Sweet Land of Liberty? In a country proclaiming freedom of speech as its preeminent 1st Amendment constitutional right, we now seek to silence voices instead of protecting them.   College students protest to cancel speakers with “incorrect” viewpoints.  A counter-protest is an opposing speech.  A cancel protest is a suppression of speech that is worse than any expression of speech.    

…may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.  Do they teach children this lesson anymore, or has it gone the way of multiplication tables?   Of course, it is much easier to widely broadcast words today than when the author penned them in the mid-1800s.  We are no longer limited to whispering gossip into our classmate’s ears or scrawling