Thinking Critically . . . Acting Faithfully
Bill Jones muses about Baptists, faith, ethics, justice, politics . . . and more
Joanna passed away 3 years ago at 1:16 a.m., Sunday, February 14. 2021. In this blog post, I want to share just a few of the things that were special about this wonderful, sweet, loving woman who was my wife for the last 44½ years of her life and the love of my life for Read more . . .
Earlier this week, I published a blog post featuring a passage from a James Baldwin essay taken from the book, The 60s: The Story of a Decade, published in 2016. All essays in the book were published in The New Yorker magazine during the 1960s. In that post, I promised further blog posts based on Read more . . .
Last week, I pulled from the bookshelves in my study a book that has sat unread for years and began reading it. Titled The 60s: The Story of a Decade, and published in 2016, it gathers essays by some of the most insightful and literary thinkers and writers of the 1960s, all published in The Read more . . .
It was 25 years ago today – December 23, 1998 – that I fell on the ice and suffered a severe brain bleed that put me in the hospital for a couple of days, cost me my sense of smell (which I have since only partially recovered), and caused me severe head pain for a Read more . . .
(NOTE: I came across this article today, November 10, 2023, as I was continuing the task of going through Daddy’s voluminous files – a task that is in its 17th year, having begun with his passing in June 2007. From January 1957 until his retirement at the end of 1978, at the age of 65, Read more . . .
The Texas Rangers’ win in the 2023 World Series marks only the fourth time one of “my” teams has won the World Series. Ironically, I first became a baseball fan in 1962, when my parents and I LEFT Dallas to move to Kansas City, MO. DFW had no major league baseball team back then. Daddy Read more . . .
(NOTE: For yesterday’s monthly lunch fellowship of a group we call “Geezers,” we were asked: If we had one last sermon to preach, what would be our scripture text, what would be our topic of emphasis, and why? We were given 3 minutes each to share with the group. Being one of the few non-clergy Read more . . .
(Scroll to the end for links to my previous 20 blog tributes to Joanna since her passing.) This marks my 21st blog post paying tribute to Joanna since her passing in February 2021. They’ve slowed down since the feverish pace I kept for that first year – 13 in the first 12 months (and that Read more . . .
George Webber, the hero (anti-hero?) of Thomas Wolfe’s novel, You Can’t Go Home Again, realizes that “You can’t go . . . back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” In his litany of such “homes” he includes, “back home to the ivory tower.” In the sense that nothing is the same as when Read more . . .
(NOTE: I published a much shorter version of this review on Amazon.com this past Saturday night. This is the complete original version, which I cut to fit Amazon’s standards.) My wife and I joined Wilshire Baptist Church in August 2004, on the very Sunday that Wilshire was celebrating George Mason’s 15th anniversary as senior pastor. Read more . . .