Author: Jeff Hampton

For Wilshire Baptist Church

Last weekend we enjoyed the annual garden tour put on by the Richardson Women’s Club. We always come away with ideas as well as motivation and inspiration to take our little piece of Eden to the next level.

Something I noticed this year perhaps for the first time – or just experienced in a new way – was that some people like free-form, almost wild gardens, and some like more tidy, formal environments. This year’s tour featured both. Some gardens were full of flowers and shrubs almost on top of each other as if competing for dominance and attention, and some were more intentional in the separation and showcasing of individual plants. In the latter, you could get a good look at the shape and color of each plant, and the former gave a sense that experiencing the entirety of the garden was the point.

Continue reading “Chaos and Order in the Garden”

For Wilshire Baptist Church

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  Ol’ Chuck Dickens nailed it when he wrote those first lines to A Tale of Two Cities. He was writing about life during the French Revolution, but the mixed feelings evoked by those words have probably been felt by all of us at one time or another. I’ve felt the highs and lows bundled together many times, and I felt it again Friday.

We drove to Waco for an event at Baylor celebrating academic scholarships. We were lured by the prospect we might finally meet a student who had received the small endowed memorial scholarship we’ve funded for graduate students in journalism. We arrived a few minutes late and were directed to our assigned table and sat down in the only two vacant seats together. We turned our chairs and listened to the speaker and then turned back to get settled and meet the others at the table.

Continue reading “Best and Worst . . . and Best”

For Wilshire Baptist Church

I finally asked the question I’ve wanted to ask a commercial business for a long time: “Do you play this music because you like it, or do you play it because you believe customers such as me like it?”

I’ve noticed over the past decade that many stores, restaurants, offices and even medical facilities have music playing in the background from the 1970s and ’80s. That’s my sweet spot for popular, secular music because that’s when I was in junior high, high school, college and young adulthood. The songs from those two decades are burned into my memory to the point that I’ve found it hard to warm up to current music.

Continue reading “Mystery and Magic of Music”