Thinking Critically . . . Acting Faithfully
Bill Jones muses about Baptists, faith, ethics, justice, politics . . . and more
Personal reflections and musings
It’s been a year-and-a-half since Bob Morris, my best friend (outside of family), passed away, and I had the honor of eulogizing him at his funeral. On March 18, 1974 – 50 years ago today – Bob and I met when we both started work as telephone operators (on the old classic cordboard) at the Read 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 . . .
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 . . .
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 . . .
(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 . . .
(Scroll to the end for links to my previous 19 blog tributes to Joanna since her passing.) It was 2½ years ago last evening, February 13, 2021, that I reluctantly left the hospital (per COVID rules) in Fort Worth and returned home, concerned that Joanna had not been very responsive the past few hours. Then, Read more . . .
(NOTE: This is taken from my Facebook post of Friday, August 11, 2023. I post it here to my blog for those who have not seen it on Facebook.) It’s not every day that you get to re-visit an elementary school of your youth, 61 years after you left it. For me, it was never, Read more . . .
(Scroll to the end for links to my previous 18 blog tributes to Joanna since her passing.) It was 50 years ago this past week, July 1973, that I flew from my home in Kansas City, MO, to Boston to visit my girlfriend. Joanna and I had been dating for about 6 months. I had Read more . . .
(NOTE: I posted the following to Facebook on Tuesday, February 14. I’m re-posting it here to my blog for the benefit of those of you who aren’t on Facebook or didn’t see it there.) This morning, I came across, in my files, an OBU (𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘯𝘪) Magazine whose cover read “𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗢𝗸𝗹𝗮𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗮 . Read more . . .