By Glenn Dromgoole The popular Christmas carol, “O Holy Night,” was first performed in 1847 in France and was translated into English eight years later by a Unitarian abolitionist who felt the third verse spoke to the evils of slavery: “Truly He taught us to love one another. His law is love and His gospel is peace. Chains shall He

It was Christmas Eve. I was at the office late, putting out the Christmas Day edition at the newspaper where I worked. Everyone else had gone, save one or two other souls who were printing the paper. A woman appeared at the door, desperate. She had just driven back into town after spending the past week with her husband, who

What Christmas is about can be said in two words.Love triumphs.The story of Jesus, whose birth we celebrate, is about that very simple message.Loving is better than hating.Hate destroys. Love builds.Hate divides. Love unites.Hate produces enemies out of friends. Love produces friends out of enemies.Hate arouses suspicion. Love offers forgiveness.Jesus came to say, “There is a better way to live.

By Glenn Dromgoole “A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.” – William Arthur Ward. I was fortunate, early in my journalistic career, to get to know a great everyday philosopher in William Arthur Ward, a 1940 McMurry grad. His day job was promoting and publicizing the college he worked for — Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. But

By Glenn Dromgoole The first thing I do when I get to church on Sunday is check the bulletin to see what hymns we’re singing that day. Scanning the list on a recent Sunday, I noticed that we were singing two of the hymns that I’ve included in a not-so-serious list of what I call “occupational hymns” – hymn titles

By Glenn Dromgoole Living in West Texas, I’m kind of surprised that we don’t sing this hymn more often – “There Shall Be Showers of Blessing.” “Mercy drops round us are falling,” the hymn says, “but for the showers we plead.”  Certainly we do. In the part of Texas where I grew up, we sang that hymn, but I’m not

By Glenn Dromgoole Brevity is a virtue, to be sure. But evidently not in literature. These days, a book needs to be at least 100,000 words to be taken seriously.  Well, I’ve written about 35 books, and if you took all my books and put them together, they might not top 100,000 words. But, then, I’ve not always been taken