My last three columns

Many paths lead to spirituality
Feb 20, 2011

Occasionally I get e-mails from well-meaning Evangelical folks who, knowing that I come from a Southern Baptist tradition, will challenge me to take my column to the next level.

I get comments like, "Why don't you use your column to spread the good news of Christ?" If they are feeling particularly brave, they will issue stronger comments like, "Your meaningless drivel doesn't belong on the religion page! Why don't you tell people that Jesus is their only hope?"

There are two reasons I don't use my column to proselytize. First, aside from the fact that I wouldn't have a column if my editors thought I was using it to spread my own version of the Gospel, there is a simpler reason: I write a spiritual column, not a religious one.

What's the difference, you ask?

Spirituality is that sense of awe and wonder we all have about the creation that surrounds us. It's about who we are, how we hope, how we pray and how love works. Spirituality is that piece of ourselves that attracts us to something outside ourselves. It is that basic appetite or search engine we have that seeks our creator.

Religion is one of the destinations to which spirituality often can take us. Destinations can be different for all of us. Spirituality may bring a person to Christianity, but it might also bring a person to Buddhism or Judaism.
Personally, I'm not ashamed to say it here, loud and clear, that my spiritual search has led me to Jesus Christ and the God that Jesus is said to reveal.

My personal faith is something I recommend to everyone who asks me about the hope I carry within me.

Since Christianity is my chosen religion, I worship and dialogue with those who believe as I do. But in this newspaper column, I seek a more ambitious dialogue. I seek a dialogue that takes me beyond the Christian community and into a conversation with all those made in the image of God.

It is the same kind of cross-cultural dialogue I challenge my readers to seek and explore.

Now, consider the aforementioned reaction that I've received from some Evangelical readers, and you can see how easily it can translate into a metaphor about how we seek to share our own faith with others.

There are many folks who seek to share their faith and spirituality on the religion page of life and proclaim their faith only to people who would agree with them. The kindly expression for their strategy is that they are "preaching to the choir." The less kindly expression is they've "become so heavenly minded, they're no earthly good."

The problem with that strategy is that if we only look for a god that looks like us, we are going to miss God in a lot of places. The truth is, if you really believe your religion has relevance to life, then you'll want to forgo the discussion with like-minded people and test it out where people really live.

So, in the end, I'd rather write this column in the same way I live, not as some kind of apostle or Elmer Gantry evangelist, but hopefully as a signpost or headline in life, gently nudging, not judging, people toward a relationship with a benevolent creator.

Burkes is a former civilian hospital chaplain and an Air National Guard chaplain. Write norris@thechaplain.net or visit thechaplain.net.

What do you hold sacred?
Feb 13, 2011

About twice a week, I jog past the burnt shell of a neighborhood house and wonder what the owners were able to save. If I were to lose my house to fire, I would at least rescue the three P's: people, pets and pictures.

But after that, I'd rescue the ordinary items I've learned to call "sacred."
First, there is the Gerber pocketknife my brother-in-law gave me 30 years ago. A newlywed at 22, I remember thinking, This is a grown-up knife. Grown-up dudes like MacGyver carry knives in case they have to skin something, carve something or defend sweethearts against roving street gangs. As ludicrous as it sounds, you can't always choose your sacred things, they choose you.

I'd also retrieve my 1979 Baylor University class ring. My attachment for it has nothing to do with being true to my school. No, my affection for the ring comes from a challenge issued by my roommate as I struggled with a physics class assignment one afternoon.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "You'll never graduate. You're just not 'Baylor material.' "

From that day forward, I not only counted my remaining days with him, but I counted the days until I would become eligible to wear the ring. It was not just proof I could be "Baylor material," but a sacred reminder of my self-promise to finish what I'd started.

After graduating, my girlfriend, now wife, accepted it as a promise ring during a summer job I took in an adjoining state. She knew the ring was sacred to me, and therefore a sacred promise to her.

I'd also be certain to grab the New King James Bible that Susan Bradley, a parishioner, gave me in 1988. The Bible is the out-of-print Robert Schuller's Positive Thinking Bible with optimistic Scriptures highlighted in blue.

The Bible is special because Susan was special. She and her husband, Bill, floated the interim loan we needed between the sale of our first home and the purchase of the next.

While we weren't much of a risk, it was a lot of money. At the time, I knew Bill had cancer, but Susan kept her cancer a secret. A few years later, I read from her Bible while officiating at their funerals. The Bible is the tangible demonstration of sacred trust.

Finally, I'd save my trumpet. Funny thing is that this pawnshop purchase has never worked well. The internal valves shift to produce the sound of a wounded animal.

It's not sacred at all, for it never could replace the sacredness I knew in my boyhood trumpet stolen 30 years ago.

What is sacred is the effort my wife made to replace the trumpet on a newlywed budget. Seeing the hurt caused by the petty thief, my wife scrimped for six months, saving the money to replace it.

I keep it now for the sacred effort she made to protect me from the painful loss.

Sacredness isn't limited to religion. In fact, it may be sacrilegious to delineate between the sacred and the ordinary.

Sacredness is contained in the ordinary spaces and things we allow the love of God to permeate, enunciate and illustrate.

After I grabbed these sacred things, I'd let my plasma screen TV and my computer burn. After all, I'm insured, and I'd do what any good man would do after a devastating fire. I'd buy a bigger TV and a faster computer.

What sacred thing would you rescue? Share your answer with someone special and then e-mail me at Norris@thechaplain.net or write me at P.O. Box 247, Elk Grove, CA 95759.

Subtle questions still plague race relations
Feb 06, 2011

"Have you ever been fired from a church?" I once asked my dad.
As a pastor, he was subject to the whim of the local congregation whose denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, saw 2,000 ministers fired each year.

My dad paused, as if wondering how much he should tell me.
"Once," he announced. "I shook hands with a black man on the steps of our Mississippi church. I was fired the next week."

Last month, as I hung around the National Guard Chaplain's Conference in Washington, D.C., with Seventh-day Adventist Chaplain Ivan Williams, I realized how far we've come in race relations since my dad's generation.

Ivan is African-American. We've been friends for almost 10 years, and during the conference, we ate meals together, shared our hurts and even went shopping together.

Hanging around Ivan is like befriending a true celebrity. People of all colors and persuasions love him. He's funny. He's sincere, and he's extremely caring to people he meets.

On one of our museum outings, when we stood looking at a gallery of previous museum directors, I said to Ivan, "Did you notice there aren't any people of color among these directors?"

Ivan surprised me when he responded with, "You ask questions other white people won't ask."

"Are you talking about how I asked the question about lunchtime in the conference?"

"Nah, man. You know what I mean," he said.

I did know. So, I asked a few more things.

"Why is it that you make friends wherever you go? And why is it that since I'm a member of a majority race, I have to prove my intentions with folks? Sometimes I'm jealous of you, man."

I don't know why, but we always call each other "man."

We laughed, perhaps a bit nervously as friends breaching the race issue. We both knew race relations had come a long way since rogue policemen let loose the dogs or pushed folks to the back of the bus, or off the lunch counter, but we also knew the subtle questions remain.

I had to wonder what it was about the clerk or waitress of color who'd greet Ivan first and bring that extra ice tea without asking. Yet I'm sure Ivan also questioned why it was the white people we met would often speak to me as if I was in charge.

There is an interesting little verse in Romans, which says, "God does not show favoritism." It's not a particularly profound thought until you analyze the passage in the early manuscripts. Literally, the verse says: "God is not a face receiver." It means God doesn't look upon the race of the face, but as the verse says, grants "glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good."

About the same time that the church fired my dad for shaking hands with a black man, a Biblical scholar named Clarence Jordan founded an interracial farming community called Koinonia based on the question: "Could people who followed the same Lord work side-by-side with people of all colors?"

As you might imagine, they experienced a great deal of opposition to that question, but the community still exists today. (See koinoniapartners.org.)
Jordan believed in questions that could provoke change. And I leave you with one of those questions he asked his own brother. When his brother balked at helping Koinonia Farms with legal representation, Clarence asked him, "Are you a disciple of Christ or merely an admirer?"

Good question for all of us.

three more columns

Readers,

In my last email, I cut off the last part of a column. I've re-sent the column in the bottom of today's email


Subtle questions still plague race relations

BY NORRIS BURKES • FLORIDA TODAY • FEBRUARY 6, 2011
"Have you ever been fired from a church?" I once asked my dad.
As a pastor, he was subject to the whim of the local congregation whose denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, saw 2,000 ministers fired each year.
My dad paused, as if wondering how much he should tell me.
"Once," he announced. "I shook hands with a black man on the steps of our Mississippi church. I was fired the next week."

Last month, as I hung around the National Guard Chaplain's Conference in Washington, D.C., with Seventh-day Adventist Chaplain Ivan Williams, I realized how far we've come in race relations since my dad's generation.
Ivan is African-American. We've been friends for almost 10 years, and during the conference, we ate meals together, shared our hurts and even went shopping together.

Hanging around Ivan is like befriending a true celebrity. People of all colors and persuasions love him. He's funny. He's sincere, and he's extremely caring to people he meets.

On one of our museum outings, when we stood looking at a gallery of previous museum directors, I said to Ivan, "Did you notice there aren't any people of color among these directors?"

Ivan surprised me when he responded with, "You ask questions other white people won't ask."

"Are you talking about how I asked the question about lunchtime in the conference?"

"Nah, man. You know what I mean," he said.

I did know. So, I asked a few more things.

"Why is it that you make friends wherever you go? And why is it that since I'm a member of a majority race, I have to prove my intentions with folks? Sometimes I'm jealous of you, man."

I don't know why, but we always call each other "man."

We laughed, perhaps a bit nervously as friends breaching the race issue. We both knew race relations had come a long way since rogue policemen let loose the dogs or pushed folks to the back of the bus, or off the lunch counter, but we also knew the subtle questions remain.

I had to wonder what it was about the clerk or waitress of color who'd greet Ivan first and bring that extra ice tea without asking. Yet I'm sure Ivan also questioned why it was the white people we met would often speak to me as if I was in charge. There is an interesting little verse in Romans, which says, "God does not show favoritism." It's not a particularly profound thought until you analyze the passage in the early manuscripts. Literally, the verse says: "God is not a face receiver." It means God doesn't look upon the race of the face, but as the verse says, grants "glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good."

About the same time that the church fired my dad for shaking hands with a black man, a Biblical scholar named Clarence Jordan founded an interracial farming community called Koinonia based on the question: "Could people who followed the same Lord work side-by-side with people of all colors?"

As you might imagine, they experienced a great deal of opposition to that question, but the community still exists today. (See koinoniapartners.org.)
Jordan believed in questions that could provoke change. And I leave you with one of those questions he asked his own brother. When his brother balked at helping Koinonia Farms with legal representation, Clarence asked him, "Are you a disciple of Christ or merely an admirer?"

Good question for all of us.


A good reminder to live in the moment

BY NORRIS BURKES • FLORIDA TODAY • JANUARY 30, 2011

As you read this, you should know Harold Camping is warning that you have less than four months before Jesus returns.

And the word is, the Lord Jesus Christ ain't happy.

Before you dismiss Camping as a crackpot, you should know he is no slouch. Well, at 89, he may slouch a bit, but mostly he's a businessman who owns a chain of 150 conservative Christian radio stations called Family Radio.

With a civil engineering degree from the University of California at Berkeley, Camping has a flair for calculations.

He says the Bible contains a decipherable code that reveals something Jesus categorically called unpredictable, namely the date of Jesus' return.
He's put those calculations on hundreds of billboards nationwide stating that Jesus will return on May 21, 2011, to be followed by the catastrophic destruction of Earth on Oct. 21, 2011.

It's these specific predictions that make Camping an easy target of ridicule from those within and without the Christian faith.

But if we were honest with ourselves, we'd admit Camping's calamitous predictions remind us of two sides of our lives: one good and the other not so much.

On the better side, there is a way in which we should treat every day as if this was our last day in this world.

And not just because it will be the last day for some of us, but because this moment is the only moment truly promised to us.

I'm not suggesting you max your credit card or quit your job. I'm suggesting you give your full attention to living life now. How will you use your now?
But the flip side is the negative way in which we can make rash predictions about our future. It's called catastrophizing, and it's the way we tend to turn small things into catastrophes.

The online Urban Dictionary defines this common psychological term: "to hyper-imagine negative outcomes to a situation that has no basis in reality. To blow problems out of proportion such that you spiral into an emotional catastrophe."

Simply put, it's like taking an otherwise manageable problem and imagining how that problem will become the catastrophic end of our world.The ironic thing about catastrophizing is that it tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Psychological studies done at the University of California, Riverside, indicate: "Males with a tendency to catastrophize were at the highest risk for early death . . . and were 25 percent more likely to die by age 65 . . . by accident or violence."Jesus wasn't a psychiatrist. In a little session he conducted on a hillside, usually referred to as the Sermon on the Mount, he perfectly summarized my column points in the Message translation of the Bible:
1. "Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now."
2. "Don't get worked up (or catastrophize) about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes."
And when Jesus provides my column summary, I can't think of much more to say, unless it would be to ask him for an interview and preferably before Oct. 21.


Norris Burkes: Expressing sympathy can be a tricky task
BY NORRIS BURKES • FLORIDA TODAY • JANUARY 23, 2011


"What we've got here is (a) failure to communicate" is the statement made famous by the prison warden in the 1967 film "Cool Hand Luke." It's a line I find myself repeating when a reader's interpretation of my column sounds like something pulled from a rabbit hole.

I'll usually respond with: "What I meant to say . . .," but it's rare that the reader will renege and let me know, "Oh, now I understand."
Such are the limitations of written communication.

Perhaps nowhere is communication more important than in the moment we attempt to convey sympathy or understanding. As a chaplain, I've noticed there are three ways people can show concern toward someone who has experienced a tragedy or a loss in their lives.

First, there is a written form. Inevitably, someone introduces written communication expressed through a greeting card. Discussion arises on who will pick the card. What is appropriate? Something direct or something poetic?

With the card purchased, everyone signs it. Some are artificially relieved with the feeling they've done something. And yes, it's something, but it's very limited in what it can convey.

Secondly, I encourage people to talk to the bereft, because speech doesn't have the limitations of the written word. If someone misunderstands your speech, it can be repeated, slowed, rephrased, softened or strengthened. Or you simply can try again later.

There are good things to say to those who are hurting that will help them express their grief. I advise people to simply state their observations.

You can say things such as: "I know you were very close to her." "I have no idea what it must be like for you." "People are going to miss him, especially you." "All of this is unreal. It must be hard to accept."

The best conversations share memories of the deceased. By offering stories and anecdotes, you show willingness to keep memories alive. If you didn't know the deceased, it's a good idea to invite the sharing of a story or photo.
But even speech has its problems. The list is long of things not to say, such as: "It was God's will." "I know how you feel." "God doesn't give you more than you can handle." "Give it time."

Unfortunately, the fear of saying the wrong thing often will silence people and leave the grieving feeling neglected.

That's why I favor personal presence as the best form of communicating your sympathy. Presence trumps writing and speech.
I often quote the story of the nurse who introduced me to a woman whose mother was bleeding to death in our operating room. Knowing there was nothing I could say to make it better, I simply asked her if I could sit in reverent silence while her mother died.

She readily accepted.

People who share their presence are people who go beyond the impotent offer, "If there's anything I can do, let me know."

When my father died, my sister anticipated these cliché offers, so she prepared a signup list of errands and chores that invited people to be present in the grief process. People who were sincere in their offer stood up and showed up. One man even mowed my widowed mother's lawn for a year.
By communicating willingness to disregard our comforts and be present following or during the moments of tragedy, we ensure there is no failure to communicate God's love.

Burkes is a former civilian hospital chaplain and an Air National Guard chaplain. Write norris@thechaplain.net or visit thechaplain.net. You also can follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/norrisburkes.

Three columns from January

Good marriage requires sweat

BY NORRIS BURKES • FLORIDA TODAY•
January 9, 2011

I've done a lot of premarital counseling. It's a
serious endeavor, but it can be fraught with
comedy.

Just a few weeks before a wedding, I once had a
groom-to-be toss me a "by-the-way bomb."

"My fiancée wants to omit the promise, 'Till death do
us part.' Would that be a deal breaker for the
ceremony?"

Deju vu. It was the same question from a bride-to-
be who asked me to change the promise to read,
"Till love do us part."

"I really have to stick with the unabridged format," I
told them both. The first couple found another
chaplain and the latter couple dissolved their
marriage when the groom left on a Navy cruise and
the bride parted to go with a land lover.

Unfortunately, marriage counseling is far less
comedic and much more frustrating. The most
frustrating thing is that I feel like I have been
blessed with a marriage that I cannot clone in
others.

A good marriage is a complicated dish, and I don't
have the recipe or I'd publish it.

Often I've come home from a difficult counseling
case, and I'll hold my wife tight. There is no greater
priority than my marriage, because I believe God
gave marriage to mankind as the closest equal to
unconditional love. Despite God's intention for
marriage, many are willing to take the risk of making
marriage analogous to hell.

While working as a hospital chaplain, a respiratory
therapist burst into my office, "Chaplain, Chaplain!
She said 'yes!' "

"She" was another therapist who'd just accepted his
wedding proposal after two years of dating. I knew
them well enough to assume their biggest challenge
would be to quit smoking. Despite what respiratory
therapists witness, some still smoke like chimneys.

He heralded the news from
floor to floor until he arrived on the bottom floor --
literally and figuratively. Upon arriving in the unit
where his old girlfriend was the shift manager, she
gave him a congratulatory hug. Then she invited
him into a closet, where she "congratulated" him a
bit more thoroughly.

In a hot Texas minute, a two-year relationship went
up in smoke. Hospital administration congratulated
them both with unpaid vacations.


When you see people like these therapists risking
something so precious, it shakes you. You try to
define and categorize what you have in a vain
attempt to keep it and control it. I wish it worked
that way.

I am not entirely sure what my wife and I have. It's
the kind of love that continues, whether I burn the
toast or burn my temper. It's a love that tells me I'm
forgiven before I ask. It's the kind of love described
in our wedding vow that "halves a sorrow and
doubles a joy."

Like many couples, we sometimes go to bed dead
tired, sometimes too tired for the fun I seek and too
tired for the prayers she wants. But we rarely are too
tired to talk out our day and absolutely never too
tired for our three good night kisses and "I love
you."

Still, maybe there is a thing that I know about
marriage that respiratory therapists also know about
smokers. Therapists, who watch smokers die, know
they are no less likely to become smokers.
Advertisement

Ministers, who watch marriages die, aren't any less
likely to divorce. It takes work to quit smoking, and
it takes work to make marriages successful.

So at the end of the day, I realize there is something
Freudian about the way my fast fingers always often
seem to mistype "sweetheart" into "sweatheart."

A good marriage takes a lot of work and spiritual
sweat.

I love you, sweat-heart. Happy 31st anniversary.

Burkes is a former civilian hospital chaplain and an
Air National Guard chaplain. Write
norris@thechaplain.net or visit thechaplain.net.



I don't understand unimaginable tragedies


BY NORRIS BURKES • FLORIDA TODAY• January
16, 2011


Last week, when all hell broke loose in a Tucson,
Ariz., parking lot, I was attending a writer's
workshop. The instructor challenged us to write an
essay beginning with the phrase: "I've never
understood why . . ."

Normally, my writer's block kicks into overdrive
when faced with contrived topics, but the Tucson
events easily cued me to write about a similar event
22 years ago this week.

I've never understood why we aren't doing more to
stop these tragedies. If you were there with me in
the Stockton, Calif., schoolyard after Patrick Purdey
released a hail of bullets that injured 29 and killed
five Asian children between 6 and 8 years old, you,
too, might say, "I don't understand."

If you shared tears, as I did, with the school's
principal who caressed the pale faces of dying
children, you, too, would say, "I don't understand."

If you stared into the eyes of the Cambodian mother
and her 11-year-old son as she repeated, "No
understand. No understand," you'd wonder as I did:
How can I make her understand the unimaginable?

So, I showed her a list of names and pointed to her
daughter's name. I pursed my lips to hold back my
own tears and shook my head sadly.

The woman immediately understood. "Sh-di?" she
said. Our eyes collided with a pained look of
confusion. I did not understand her.

"Sh-di?" she repeated.

This time I understood. She was asking if her
daughter had died.

"Yes," I said, looking into her stoic face. "She died.
I'm so sorry. She die."

She looked at her English-speaking son in search of
a second opinion and he gave a confirming nod.


She did not cry. Neither one of them moved. But
suddenly, in something that I can only describe as
"emotional ventriloquism," her grief was transmitted
into her son's eyes and a small tear traced a path
along his frozen face. Inside he was surely saying, "I
don't understand."

How could I make them understand that, despite
their escape from the killing fields of Southeast Asia,
their children could be mowed down like wheat in a
field within the boundaries of a country that had
begged them to come.


If you had been in that room with us, and in my
bedroom for the next year as I lie awake nursing
those horrendous images, you, too, would shake in
anguish saying, "I don't understand."

So as I watched the news coming from Tucson, I
kept saying, "I don't understand." And I still don't.

I don't understand why we aren't taking better care
of the mentally ill. I don't understand why news
media talking heads from both sides of the political
debate continue to fuel the fire with hateful rhetoric.

But most of all, from my perspective, I don't
understand why the Federal Assault Weapons Ban,
passed a few years after Cleveland Elementary, was
allowed to expire on Sept. 13, 2004. I will never
understand the opposition to common sense things
like a national waiting period to buy guns or better
background checks.

I think we all understand, however, the universal
teaching, "Thou shalt not kill."
Advertisement

And when we entertain hateful rhetoric, stifle health
care for the mentally ill and fail to responsibly
regulate guns, we share complicity in these killings.

I suppose I should steel myself for the onslaught of
e-mail from people who will urge me, as people
often do when they disagree with me, to stay out of
politics and stick with religion.

And to those folks, I pre-emptively declare: There is
no more important religious issue than life. I
choose life.





Norris Burkes: Expressing sympathy can be a tricky task


BY NORRIS BURKES • FLORIDA TODAY• January
23, 2011


"What we've got here is (a) failure to communicate" is
the statement made famous by the prison warden in
the 1967 film "Cool Hand Luke." It's a line I find
myself repeating when a reader's interpretation of
my column sounds like something pulled from a
rabbit hole.

I'll usually respond with: "What I meant to say . . .,"
but it's rare that the reader will renege and let me
know, "Oh, now I understand."

Such are the limitations of written communication.

Perhaps nowhere is communication more important
than in the moment we attempt to convey sympathy
or understanding. As a chaplain, I've noticed there
are three ways people can show concern toward
someone who has experienced a tragedy or a loss
in their lives.

First, there is a written form. Inevitably, someone
introduces written communication expressed
through a greeting card. Discussion arises on who
will pick the card. What is appropriate? Something
direct or something poetic?

With the card purchased, everyone signs it. Some
are artificially relieved with the feeling they've done
something. And yes, it's something, but it's very
limited in what it can convey.

Secondly, I encourage people to talk to the bereft,
because speech doesn't have the limitations of the
written word. If someone misunderstands your
speech, it can be repeated, slowed, rephrased,
softened or strengthened. Or you simply can try
again later.

There are good things to say to those who are
hurting that will help them express their grief. I
advise people to simply state their observations.

You can say things such as: "I know you were very
close to her." "I have no idea what it must be like for
you." "People are going to miss him, especially you."
"All of this is unreal. It must be hard to accept."


The best conversations share memories of the
deceased. By offering stories and anecdotes, you
show willingness to keep memories alive. If you
didn't know the deceased, it's a good idea to invite
the sharing of a story or photo.

But even speech has its problems. The list is long of
things not to say, such as: "It was God's will." "I
know how you feel." "God doesn't give you more
than you can handle." "Give it time."


Unfortunately, the fear of saying the wrong thing
often will silence people and leave the grieving
feeling neglected.

That's why I favor personal presence as the best
form of communicating your sympathy. Presence
trumps writing and speech.

I often quote the story of the nurse who introduced
me to a woman whose mother was bleeding to death
in our operating room. Knowing there was nothing I
could say to make it better, I simply asked her if I
could sit in reverent silence while her mother died.

She readily accepted.

People who share their presence are people who go
beyond the impotent offer, "If there's anything I can
do, let me know."

When my father died, my sister anticipated these
cliché offers, so she prepared a signup list of
errands and chores that invited people to be present
in the grief process. People who were sincere in
their offer stood up and showed up. One man even
Advertisement

mowed my widowed mother's lawn for a year.

By communicating willingness to disregard our
comforts and be present following or during the
moments of tragedy, we ensure there is no failure to
communicate God's love.

Burkes is a former civilian hospital chaplain and an
Air National Guard chaplain. Write
norris@thechaplain.net or visit thechaplain.net.You
also can follow him on Facebook at facebook.
com/norrisburkes.