Dr. Ralph Wilson, director of Joyful Heart Renewal Ministries, once wrote: “If you ask your average heathen youngster what Easter is about, he’ll tell you about the Easter bunny and finding decorative baskets filled with annoying plastic grass that sticks to every household furnishing and those pastel foil-covered football things that are a sad excuse […]
When fishes flew and forests walked, and figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood, then surely, I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry and ears like errant wings, The devil’s walking parody on all four-footed things. The tattered outlaw of the earth, of ancient […]
A group of friends I know happen to be pretty good singers. They discovered this reality one night at a new south Kansas City bar, Corner Cocktail, some forty-five years ago. One of them was forced by his dear mother to sing in a church choir because, as she said, we should use our talents […]
“You say we’ve got nothing in common, no common ground to start from, and that we’re falling apart…And I said, ‘What about Breakfast at Tiffany’s?’ And she said, ‘I think I remember that film, and as I recall, we both kinda liked it.’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s one thing we’ve got’.” Those lyrics from […]
“I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains, I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains. There’s more than one answer to my questions, pointing me in a crooked line. And the less I seek my source as a definitive, the closer I am to fine.” From the Indigo Girls to […]
On Valentine’s Day, 1929, in Chicago, when tension between organized crime gangs and city police exploded, there was a bloody massacre that is still talked about today. Four years later in June, at Kansas City’s Union Station, another bloodbath occurred when local mobs and what later became the FBI tangled in a similarly notorious shoot-out. […]
The victory parade route in downtown Kansas City is becoming well known, much like the Mardi Gras parade route in New Orleans each year. This week they are on back-to-back days as the Chiefs accomplished the rare feat of winning back-to-back Super bowls. This time, the mobile celebration falls on Valentine’s Day which also happens […]
The origins of Mardi Gras can be traced to Medieval Europe. Our American rituals are rooted mainly with practices dating back to 17th Century France when King Louis XIV commissioned explorers to establish colonies in the New World. French-Canadians, Jean Baptiste Bienville and Pierre d’Iberville, went south around modern-day Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and eastern Texas, […]
A year ago, working with a wonderful team at Rockhurst, we activated a podcast with the same title as my blog: “Upon This Rock.” We began by interviewing Alvin Brooks, for whom the future Alvin Brooks Center for Faith-Justice is named; his life and inspiring words encourage us to lay rock-solid foundations in our society […]
Two thousand and twenty-four has been named a Year of Prayer by the Holy Father. This designation is made in preparation for the Jubilee or Holy Year of 2025. In a sense, this is to be a quiet year amidst the thunder of war, noise of political campaigns, screeching sounds of local and global unrest, […]
UPON THIS ROCK 