First Things RSS Feed - Russell E. Saltzman

Voting in Fear and Trembling

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 09:40:00 -0500

The election of 2016 confronted me with a crisis. My actuarial life expectancy has me down to about three-and-a-half presidential campaigns in the years ahead, so as I entered the voting booth this year, I wanted this one to really count. But there was no one anywhere on the presidential ballot for whom I could vote with a settled conscience.

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Goldwater Déjà vu

Thu, 25 Aug 2016 06:00:00 -0400

In 1964, my maternal grandfather flabbergasted his entire family and astonished parts of the civilized world by casting his ballot for Barry Goldwater for President of the United States, against Lyndon Johnson.

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How To Live on $8.90 an Hour

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Deciding that I needed to get out more, I went looking for a job. I wasn’t expecting an executive position, as the Jim Croce song has it, but it didn’t seem out of the question that I would find something befitting my experience, age, innate dignity, winsome ways, fair looks, bad knees, and dapper wardrobe selections from second-hand clothing stores. So I got an hourly job where a seventeen-year old girl was my training coach.

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Edenic Recollections

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 -0400

My oldest son once spent a summer on staff at a Scout reservation. Underneath his tent platform lived a family of skunks. They would amble by, mama and her kits (baby skunks are kits, as baby goats are kids), with nary a hint of animosity and rarely a spark of curiosity.

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Why I Won't Boycott Target

Thu, 05 May 2016 00:00:00 -0400

The man to whom I was pastor, 1988 thereabouts, owned and operated an Amoco service station (long before it became BP Amoco). To his surprise he learned the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), to which he belonged, along with several mainline denominations, had called for a boycott of Amoco products and stations.

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On Not Being Seventy

Thu, 28 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0400

For the longest moment driving home two days ago, I was convinced that my next birthday, then just days away, would be my seventieth.

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Sure, Tell Peter Too

Thu, 07 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0400

The message the women heard from the “young man” is found in St. Mark (16:5-8). Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome carried their spices to the tomb, thinking to anoint the body of Jesus. Apparently, none of them gave much thought to removing the stone from the entrance, except to fret about who might be enlisted to do it.

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A Community Pledged in the Spirit

Thu, 24 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Mulling my Lenten way through the Apostles’ Creed, I have come to see that in defining what we do not believe, we come to know better what we do believe. While the Creed positively summarizes what Christians believe, it equally fences out what we negatively do not believe. I have been walking the fence line, seeing what there is to see on the other side.

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What the Church Does Not Believe

Thu, 10 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0500

This Lent has me digging through the Apostle’s Creed. Viewed in a certain direction, it not only says what we believe; it lets us in on what we do not believe.

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What We Do Not Believe Is What We Believe

Thu, 25 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0500

I’m spending time this Lent with the Creed. I hadn’t gotten further than the first sentence before remembering something St. Peter said.

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