I am sorry that I cannot be with you this morning for this service honoring Raahsahn as he passes on to his new home in the Resurrection. I had a fall last week which resulted in a head injury. For 38 years I was Chaplain and Chair of the Religion Department at the Episcopal Academy, but more importantly Raahsahn chose me to be his advisor over four years during his student days. When you are a student’s advisor you develop a close relationship with a student’s academic, spir

Photo by Ian Dooley It has been a while that we and New Yorkers had something to celebrate. There was much to celebrate even though the Knicks lost the third game. What a great sight to see three Villanova players playing for the knicks. I don’t know if it has ever happened that a college had three players on a team playing for the Championship who were from the same school. Give credit to Jay Wright, former EA parent, for teaching them what they needed to know at the next le

Photo by Gunnar Ridderstrom A good many people including me believe that there are three things that are destroying our nation; classism, racism, and the replacement theory. We have heard a great deal about racism and classism, but today I want to focus on replacement theory as well. There are some statistics that we need to know to understand why power is so important to the white “haves” in our nation. Replacement theory is part of the glue that allows classism and racism t

Koko is a western lowland gorilla who was born on July 4, 1971, at the San Fransico Zoo. He was trained by an animal psychologist, Penny Patterson. She believed that the gorilla could be trained to communicate far beyond what was seen in the past. She decided to prove her thesis by teaching Koko how to communicate using sign language. She succeeded over four decades. Koko learned over a thousand words. Koko became famous particularly in the world of wildlife conservation. He

Among our illustrious alumni Matt Freese stands among the very best in sports. I have attached a video of an interview that Matt did which contains life lessons for us all. I have a particular perspective on Matt as I worked closely with him for several years as he was elected by the Upper School Faculty and Students in the Upper School at the Episcopal Academy in Newtown Square to be a student spiritual leader. Students (Vestry) in that role plan chapel services with me. The

There were two columns in the Inquirer (May 25) that contained an opposite view that I recently wrote about on a blog. It is the consideration that less is more and we receive this truth throughout our lives. Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of education and history at Penn, commented on his view that Harvard got it wrong regarding grade inflation. He said the real problem was that the courses did not have uniform rigor. His answer to this issue is to have the students read more

The coin of the value of Memorial Day should be more than one day. One side of the coin is Never Forget and the other side is Always Remember. Never Forget is a solemn value that requires us to keep a sacred moment that we will guard against distractions of living which are different for all of us. Memorial Day is one of those times that should be sacred. Never Forget reminds me of when a student of mine who had cancer which eventually took her life. She shared with our scho

Photo by Clay Banks A lot of serious business is going on in the world today with war, famine, climate change issues, a felon in the White House, and so much more, but I couldn’t resist making some reflection on Harvard’s major concern that there have been too many A(s) given out at their university. They have decided to cap A grades at 20%. I have seen interviews of faculty and surprise they are angry about the results of a study that was done on grade inflation. They feel t

I was appalled by the number of mistakes that I had after posting on Facebook and sending a blog to the people who read it. I applied the same ideas I posted about the two forms of wisdom, one of which is solving problems on your own, so I have done that. I went to the Sophia idea of Aristotle of why I do this and looked for some solutions to my mistakes with phronesis. Recall the first is searching for content. The second is problem solving. After proof reading for six times