Minister Of Mocha

Listen, this is the Minister Of Mocha, so you just know that every day begins with coffee. I take mine black, but some folks put a splash of milk in theirs. Today I had a mishap at Starbucks and wound up dumping my coffee on my lap and the floor. Good thing it was hot!…

Sometimes we need to shed some tears. I’m the kind of guy that cries at almost anything. Take me to a movie, and there’s a good chance I’ll get choked up. My kids make fun of me because the movie Miracle made me cry. In case you don’t know, it’s a movie about hockey. So I…

Sometimes I wake up with a song or a thought in my head. Today, it’s a thought that keeps rattling through my mind. Let me step back for a moment. Starting at about 10 o’clock last night, I began having a spasm in my left ear drum. It was a maddening fluttering noise and feeling…

It’s Christmas time again. As I write, we are sitting on a rainy Christmas Eve Eve (the day before the day before Christmas for those of you keeping score at home). I’m wishing everyone a “Joseph Christmas” (because Mary has been getting top billing for a couple of millennia)! I’m thinking about tradition and such…

Wow, I’ve been a bit lazy of late. Sometimes I get in to a rut and just start moving through life on auto-pilot. That kind of thing happens all the time, and it happened to your MoM. As I put my head down to power through the holiday season I just got caught up in…

The team that I follow in English soccer has been having a bad year. Things have been slowly deteriorating for months and it finally reached the point where the owners decided that it was time to sack the head coach. A new coach was appointed and fans throughout the world celebrated a new beginning. The…

Last week one of my favorite people was taken to the hospital. My mother in law was experiencing trouble breathing. At 92, this was a big concern. We made a decision that it would be good for my wife to go home to help out. That means that I will be spending Thanksgiving without my…

Recently I was discussing the idea of mistakes and forgiveness with my #PrisonFellowshipAcademy class. We noticed a pattern with King David in the Book of Psalms: sin, repent, repeat. At the end of class I asked each student to bring in a Psalm to discuss with the class. Most of my students did what I…

Yesterday I went on an out of town date day with my wife. We started with #CRInside at the prison, then went to see #MikeBirbiglia at a theater in LA, then had dairy free ice cream and gluten/soy/dairy free pastries on Larchmont Street, then finished it off with a nice dinner out (using gift certificates,…

I got blessed with a trip to Disneyland last week. I’m not sure if they still use the catchphrase, but as a kid I remember they always called it “The Happiest Place on Earth”. I was able to spend two full days in the park with three grandsons and two of my daughters and sons-in-law.…