Some would say that it not surprising that the United States Marine Corps was born in a bar — a tavern, actually. On Nov. 10, 1775, the Continental Congress formed the Continental Marines. Captain Samuel Nicholas was commissioned as the first officer in the Corps on Nov. 28, 1775, and set up the first recruiting post in a tavern.

In some parts of the Church world, the “saints” are those men and women whose lives are so exemplary and in whom such love and grace was manifest that, after their death, they were declared to be “saints,” worthy of veneration and imitation.

The October 2009 edition of Healthy Cells magazine featured an interesting article on sexual addiction. Nashville resident David Kyle Foster, a minister of my acquaintance who deals with a plethora of “sexual brokenness issues,” has stated that, on any given Sunday, seated in a 16-person pew are 12 people who are having issues with some form of sexual dysfunction or brokenness.

Worse, perhaps, than the terrible sound made by fingernails on a blackboard is the sound of a child screaming. Of course, parents don’t view the sound the way that bystanders do.

“So where are you from?” the lady asked as she was cleaning my hotel room in Florida.

“I’m from near Atlanta,” I responded. “And where are you from?” I inquired.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I dated a young lady named Pam. She and I were attending a youth party sponsored by my Methodist church and, at some time during the evening, I wandered over to the piano and began playing, “Louie, Louie,” the only song then, or now, that I could play.

Bishop Rick Painter, rector of the Cathedral of Christ the King in Phoenix, Ariz., was recently arrested and twice convicted of a crime. His offense? What was it that would prompt law enforcement officials and the judicial system to focus on the 68-year-old bishop of a cathedral?

Like most people growing up in America, when I thought of a cathedral, that which came to mind were those magnificent structures scattered around Europe that were constructed somewhere in the Middle Ages. If the building is huge and ornate, I reasoned, it must be a cathedral.

One of the great strengths of Americans is that we have historically been able to put the past behind us and move forward.

“War is hell,” said General William T. Sherman in 1864. The politicians speak of the honor of war and the poets speak of its glory but the soldiers and the victims know the real truth… war is hell.

In 1996, Christ the King Church began in my living room. Within a few weeks we had outgrown the space (it doesn’t take very many people to outgrow a living room).

In England, the Charity Tribunal, a judicial body, has ruled that Catholic Care, the adoption agency for the Diocese of Leeds, must cooperate with homosexual couples who wish to adopt children, according to a news item in The Catholic World Reporter. The agency now faces a terrible choice.

I was put on trial last week. I didn’t even know that I had committed an offense but there I was facing a judge with a prosecutor and defender on either side of me.

Last month when I was flying home from another state, my flight was canceled. The cause, I was told, was the weather. There were no other flights out that day so I had to retrieve my car from the rental agency and find a place to stay for the night. Since I had an appointment I really needed to keep the next day, I reported to the airport at 0430 (4:30 a.m., half an hour before the Marines wake up at Parris Island) in order to catch the first flight of the day.

Once in a great while, I get the sense that time is running out. For example, on Sunday and Monday of this week, I was in three churches in three cities in Georgia and Tennessee ministering, teaching, answering questions, visiting, serving Holy Communion, and, of course, traveling.

A few years ago, I was attending a doctoral class in Pennsylvania. One of the students was a Canadian serving as the pastor of a church in the United States.

I have become accustomed to American television evangelists raking in huge amounts of cash while pleading poverty in their appeals for ever-increasing needs for money.

We had a bit of a crisis recently. On the weekend of July 4, our cable TV went out, our Internet connection was lost, and I misplaced my cell phone.

A couple of Mondays ago, I arrived by car in Selma, Ala., at about 8:30 p.m. The temperature on a local bank clock proclaimed that, as the sun was sinking in the distance, it was 100 degrees. One hundred degrees at 8:30 at night. I thought about going to the pool at the Jameson Inn where I was spending the night, but it was just too hot. I would have felt like a lobster going for his last bath.

My oldest son Jason, now a lieutenant with the police department, was a sergeant at the time. As the department chaplain, I often attended roll call and then rode in the police cruiser with an officer. That night, I was there to ride with Jason.

Forty years have passed since the United States landed a man on the moon during the summer of 1969.

Forty years since astronaut Neil Armstrong dropped the three and a half feet from the bottom rung of the ladder on the lunar vehicle and planted the first footprints permanently in the dust of our closest neighbor.

It was 40 years ago and I was looking to a summer like no other. Ever since the summer before the eighth grade, the hallowed time between the end of one school year and the beginning of the following school year had been cut agonizingly short. In the 1960s, summer vacation was a full three months long — 13 weeks in which to bask in the reality of no school. Until the eighth grade.

Welcome to the People’s Republic of San Diego County.

According to an article on HolyCoast.com, “A local pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a San Diego County official, who then threatened them with escalating fines if they continued to hold Bible studies in their home.”

When I was a child, my father would often say to me, “Son, no one owes you a living.” His intention was that I would know that I was responsible for my own life and, should I get married and have children, my own family. Evidently, Dad was wrong. Everywhere one looks it seems that an incredible number of people believe that other people owe them something — especially a living.

Forty-eight times a year, on Friday mornings at 7:30 a.m., 100 professional people gather at First Baptist Church in Peachtree City, Ga., people who have a common mission and who are united in purpose.

A crime may have been committed recently at the Pine Hill Cemetery in Auburn, Ala. Mary Norman, according to an Associated Press report, was visiting her family’s burial plot at the Pine Hill Cemetery when a man walked over and removed a flag from a grave, snapped it in two, and drove off.

One would think that a week-long meeting on theology would not be a riveting affair. At least, that was my assumption before I traveled to Orlando, Fla., a few days ago to be an observer at our denomination’s International Theological Conference.

I have recently discovered that I am a potential threat to the safety and security of the United States of America.

It was, of course, a great surprise to me. I have always considered myself a good American, a patriot, a tax-paying, law-abiding citizen, and a lover of country. I vote, I stand during the National Anthem, say the Pledge of Allegiance with my hand over my heart, and have attended Memorial Day services for over a decade. I have flown the Stars and Stripes from my front porch every single day since Sept. 11, 2001. And now, agents of the land I love have suggested that I may be a threat to the nation.

It was a solemn and sobering event.

A few evenings ago, over 30 men and women gathered in Peachtree City, Ga., to, once again, raise their right hands, take a solemn oath, and swear to “uphold and defend the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America.”

In the hours that followed the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus, the disciples were men whose hope had vanished. Their expectations, plans, dreams, and ambitions had all disappeared with Jesus as the stone rolled over the tomb. They were frightened, despondent, and discouraged.