When I was a kid and asked my dad for money, he would reach into his pocket before I could even finish asking. He’d pull out a handful of crumpled bills, separating out a linty tube of Rolaids, a half-empty, bright orange packet of Sanka, a carefully-folded cloth handkerchief and often a paper napkin on which he had scribbled his next great idea. “Here,” he’d say, handing me whatever he had. “Is that enough?” I remember, when I was a teenager, getting angry at my parents because I found out the other smart kids were using something called a thesaurus when they did their English homework, and I didn’t even know what a thesaurus was. My dad’s response was to put me in the car, take me to the bookstore in the South Shore mall (we lived on Long Island) and buy me the fattest thesaurus we could find. “Just tell me what you need,” he told me. “Tell me, and we’ll get it.” And I remember, when I was working in a church as a seminary student, opening a card from Mildred. It contained a … [Read more...]

A few months ago I flew to Oklahoma City to keynote at a conference about 90 miles outside of the city. I rented a car at the airport, refusing to pay extra for an “E-ZPass.” I impatiently told the rental clerk, “I’ll just pay the tolls.” I started driving in pattering rain that steadily increased to a downpour. It wasn’t windy, but boy — was it ever wet! I approached the first toll and chose the lane marked “cash only.” But as I drove up, I noticed there wasn’t anyone in the tollbooth. There was, however, a big sign that read: “Cars: $1.50. Quarters only.” Are you kidding me? Quarters only? Who just happens to have six quarters on them these days? And then I saw my salvation: A change machine sat just before the plastic tollbooth basket. I stopped at the machine. With a line of cars already forming behind me, I tried to insert a dollar bill. But I couldn’t get it to thread into the machine before it wilted from the rain. I got out of the car, sheltering a fresh, dry dollar bill … [Read more...]