On Super Bowl Sunday in 1981, football was the last thing on the minds of the two young friends, Trey Shelton and Kevin Curnutt. The winter afternoon was warm and sunny, perfect for riding dirt bikes on the rural outskirts of Arlington, Texas. That day, Kevin saw Trey and his bike cross a shallow stream and disappear over a hill. …
In 2012, two ministers in Pennsylvania stepped away from traditional church work to form a remarkable nonprofit called Someone To Tell It To. The mission of Michael Gingerich and Tom Kaden was as radical as it was simple: They would be there to listen — in person, on the telephone, via email or Skype — to anyone who needed a …
A few weeks ago, early in my first conversation with a remarkable person, we somehow came across the topic of grief. “I guess you’ve heard what happened to me,” he said. I hadn’t. He told me about the death of one of his children, only a few weeks earlier. How do you respond to such devastating news? I was dumbfounded …
To death and taxes, suffering should be added to the great inevitabilities — and not just the suffering born of tragedy and injustice. It’s a rare human who does not believe, at least at some deep level and at least some of the time, that he or she is fundamentally defective. It is what we have most in common. Yet …
Fred Rogers and I had known each other for three years by that day in the fall of 1998 when I learned that my brother, Steve, had been diagnosed with lung cancer. My first call was to my wife, my second to the children’s television icon at his home in Pittsburgh. It was his wife, Joanne, who answered that day, and …