February is African American History Month, and an excellent time to honor the contributions of Dr. Charles Richard Drew, an African American physician, surgeon, and medical researcher.
Sometimes I like to step back and take a look at myself from a distance, as much as that is possible, that is. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, and I’ve noticed one thing in particular: I’ve been spreading myself out kind of thin. My work and time with my daughters are fairly stable constants in my life.
From the working of the eye to the process of cell division, the human body is one very impressive piece of self-replicating engineering. For many this thought is dispiriting. If we’re simply machines, what makes us special?
Like a great many people, Oasis folks included, I was brought up religious. I went to church on Sundays and Wednesdays. I participated in church children’s choirs, attended Sunday school and participated in other church-related activities...
Faith is a funny thing. You don't know it's there until you see it-- and it's not necessarily religious. It's that twenty minutes you wait for a date to show up, hoping they won't ghost you. Or the space between the time your check engine light goes off, and your next paycheck.
We live in Houston, the long-time home and heart of the oil and gas and petrochemical manufacturing industries in the United States. These industries make the news all over the world entirely too often because of a never-ending stream of explosions, fires, releases, spills, injuries and fatalities...
With all the antipathy and insensitivity that seems to have dominated our lives over the past couple of years, now more than ever, our world needs people to be tolerant and respectful toward one another.
When I grew up, there was no such thing as boundaries. Though my family isn’t as traditionally hierarchical as some, parental authority remained strong. They had license to come into my room at any time, offer unsolicited advice, and what’s mine was theirs.
In the midst of the Thanksgiving season, what’s a newly de-converted person thankful for? Probably the same things appreciated by long-time atheist and Christian friends alike. The basics being: family, food, shelter, income, and Netflix. But there’s all sorts of wonderful things I’m thankful for...
My mother died unexpectedly on July 8th. Yes, she happened to be diagnosed with a brain tumor fifteen years prior to that, live cancer-free for eleven years, and have it return to leave her with a right-side disability for four years leading to her death...
I don’t own many t-shirts so on hot Houston weekends my Oasis shirts bearing our first core value “People are more important than beliefs” get a disproportionate share of sunshine.
That declamation burst from my lips many, many times when I was a child. Framing my early years were a father whose own childhood left him violence prone and incapable of bonding, and a benighted religious sect that was hidebound to the past.
I was very nervous when I gave my talk at Oasis about Spiritual Humanism. I wasn’t sure “coming out” as spiritual was the safest thing to do in that environment..
As we seek to build healthier relationships, it is essential that we resist our natural downward inclinations tell negative stories of what drives the behavior of others so we can gain emotional intelligence, and heal ourselves and others.
There has been a lot of discussion about automation, artificial intelligence, and how technology in general will impact our future. Most of these discussions are centered on concerns of how income and wealth will be distributed when only a small fraction of humanity can be meaningfully employed.
