It was nearly four years ago that a Boeing engineer, Lyndon Lamborn, contacted me at the East Valley Tribune to tell me the Mormon Church was excommunicating him and making it quite public — as a kind of warning to the rest of the flock that his ideas and criticism of the church were too explosive.
I especially remember my front-page Sunday morning article for the huge reaction – more than 18,000 hits on the Website story (the newspaper’s record at the time) and hundreds and hundreds of  reader comments.   I did a number of follow-up stories and was amazed by the public interest in the …

I’ve long believed that if we give validity to religions, spirituality and the metaphysical, then we have to be fully open to the psychic realm where people today claim to have gifts in the paranormal, including extra-sensory perception, foretelling the future and other unexplainable skills. 
Alas, many orthodox and traditional believers in a higher being are skeptical of contemporary metaphysical practices, from channeling to crystals to angels to Reiki to palm reading to astrology and earth religions.  Some write off these as New Age woo-woo. Yet, humans’ now and in the great past have developed broadly diverse and …

When I was younger, I relished church talent shows and putting together several acts each year that  we staged them.  Churches are already abuzz with vast talent and people typically enjoying the chance to showcase their abilities and have fun doing it.  Off and on for nearly 40 years, I’ve taken advantage of the chances to entertain, well, because it is really pretty easy to do.
As a compulsive writer since school days, I have always found it easy to come up with some clever script.  Pick some well-known entertainer and mimic …

I spent three hours today ringing a Salvation Army bell outside a Frys store at Rural Road and Southern Avenue in Tempe.  I will be there at the same time next Saturday 4-7 p.m.   My stint today was as a volunteer from my Kiwanis Club of Tempe. Next week, it will be as a board member, and secretary, of the Tempe Salvation Army Corps.
The red kettles and the bell-ringing outside of retail and food stores is a part of the Christmas season in America and across the world. The beneficence …

It is just hard to  believe that Robert “Dizzy” Disbrow is no longer out on the streets of Mesa praising Jesus and shamelessly on fire for the Lord.  A curiosity, a sideshow, a harmless eccentric, Dizzy didn’t care that he was scruffy and loud and, well, just weird.   Most of the regular drivers on East Main Street in the Stapley Drive area were used to Dizzy’s  clowning around for God.
Some thought he was a phony. Some thought his drug and alcohol abuse in earlier parts of his colorful life created a pathetic man …

It is never a good thing that death brings people together. But going back eons in most cultures, the death of folks have created reunions for the living. If it is a cruel excuse to bring people to reconnect, that is a good thing.
That said, it was breathtaking on Sunday for the massive turnout of Tempe’s prominent and faithful to attend the memorial service for Leonard “Len” Copple, a civic leader and former Tempe city councilman and vice mayor. The service for the 68-year-old attorney was held in the lovely …

Since I first saw the credentials of Thomas Olmsted, I believed that Phoenix was just a stopping off point for him.  The no-nonsense cleric who came in 2003  from Wichita, Kan.,  became the fourth bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix. He brought a dossier that suggested still higher places and higher roles for him  in the worldwide church.
His more than six years of work here have been in stride with the Vatican.  He has not made missteps where Rome could fault him.  He will be credited with cleaning up the sexual misconduct scandals …