The class was discussing argumentation, and I mentioned that bias is often encountered when trying to persuade others to accept one's point of view. "Are bias and prejudice the same thing?" a student asked.

Caught off guard, I read the dictionary's definitions: Bias is prejudice in favour of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another. Prejudice is a preconceived opinion, not based on reason or actual experience.

The dictionary and I had collaborated in creating more confusion. "Well, if the dictionary says bias is prejudice, doesn't that mean that prejudice is bias?" someone asked. Students love to stump teachers, and I was stumped.

Seeking an escape, I pointed out that, of the two terms, more negative connotations are associated with prejudice because it often refers to one person's tendency to dislike another person because of his religious beliefs, race, nationality, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status and so on.

Realizing that I was getting nowhere and relieved that the class was about to end, I challenged the students to clear up the confusion by writing an essay about an experience in their lives involving prejudice or bias.

As it turned out, the kids did a much better job of differentiating between the two terms than I did.

One girl defined prejudice by relating an incident in which prejudice and lack of prejudice were juxtaposed. She wrote about a family picnic. With blankets spread under a shade tree, they were enjoying themselves, when an old man ambled up and sat on a nearby bench. His long, white hair was uncombed, his beard was streaked with tobacco stains, and his clothes were ragged and filthy. Disgusted by his dishevelled appearance, all the picnickers ignored him. All, that is, except Robert, the student's baby brother. Man and toddler couldn't take their eyes off each other.

"Hello, big boy — what's your name?" the bum asked. Robert grinned toothlessly. Then, the two began exchanging peek-a-boos. The picnic's jovial atmosphere faded.

As the adults began preparation for leaving, the old man walked over to the baby. Before anyone could grab him, Robert crawled toward him, and the old man picked him up.

The parents were stunned — not only because their defenceless baby was in the arms of an unkempt stranger, but also because boy and man showed instant affection for one another. The old man's eyes became moist as the child tugged his whiskers. Gently, he patted Robert's back, gave him a kiss, and walked toward his mother.

"Ma'am, this is a mighty fine boy," the stranger said. "Thank you for allowing me to hold him." While handing him over, Robert held tightly to the old man, whose eyes closed as he savoured the precious moment.

The student's essay ended with this comment:

Sometimes, prejudice is an instant, unfounded reaction to another person. That is so wrong! Whereas my parents and I had instantly disliked the old man, my brother bonded with him, human to human. When confronted with prejudice or bias, we should all become as little children.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, teach us to remain true to courageous ideals and yet to be tolerant of those whose outward appearance indicates failure and cowardice. Help us to understand that the souls of such people are as worthy in Your eyes as any other soul. Amen.

I first looked at page 186 over a half-century ago; now it's my computer's screen saver.

For my tenth birthday, Mama gave me a small black Bible and said, "Son, wherever you go, take it with you, and when you're alone, troubled, afraid, and have no one to turn to, turn to page 186."

I flipped to the page. Beneath a man with long, flowing hair and a beard were these words: "I am the way, the truth, and the life." (John 14:6 KJV)

Not long after that birthday, in a looping, boyish hand, I wrote a few words beneath those printed words. My scribbling is still there today: "Look at me."

During our growing up years, my brothers, sisters, and I were roused out of bed early on Sunday morning, fed a big breakfast, ordered to scrub ourselves from head to toe, dress in our Sunday best, and load up for the drive to town.

I enjoyed Sunday School because I was with my buddies, and it didn't last long. Not so for the main service — it lasted forever! The adults listened intently to the preacher, but I'd get confused, and my mind would wander. Reasoning that there can't be anything wrong with a boy reading the Bible in church, Mama gave up on trying to make me pay attention to the sermon, and let me read the Good Book instead.

Every so often, I'd flip to page 186. The more I looked at that man, the more I was captivated. But His eyes troubled me. His head was turned slightly, and the eyes had a faraway look in them. "Look at me," I'd whisper, so that Mama didn't hear. He never would.

One Sunday, I became so absorbed in the picture that I forgot where I was, and just short of a shout, said, "Look at me." Immediately everyone within earshot did just that, including Mama. I wanted to crawl under the pew.

The reason I believe so strongly in deterrence today is because Mama instilled it in me. In her mind, there was no grey area of leniency between misbehaving and punishment. I knew what was coming.

With willow switch in hand, she asked, "Son, why did you blurt out like that in church?" I flipped to page 186 and said, "Because He won't look at me, Mama."

She studied my scrawl at the bottom of the page a long time. Then, she did what she'd never done before. She laid the dreaded switch aside, folded me into her arms, and held me a long time.

"Son, Jesus loves you; He died for you. He looks at you every minute, every hour, every day, and He always will."

Mama has been with Jesus a long time, but she knows that I still look at His picture daily, and she knows, since that time so many years ago when I felt her loving arms around me, that I've never even wondered whether I should ask Him to look at me.

Prayer: Oh, Jesus, our Saviour, cause us to come before You as children and to hear Your Word, for it is certain You will teach us to love, fear, and obey the Lord. Amen.

I was thinking about Little Mama the other day — about the time she got lost.

It was a Sunday morning in May, and my daughters wanted to play awhile before getting ready for church. They headed straight to the chicken yard to visit Little Mama.

Little Mama was a Rhode Island Red who loved her job — raising chicks. She'd been the proud mother of numerous broods. She also loved my kids, and squawked affectionately whenever they picked her up, fed her snacks, and petted her.

The back door flew open. "Little Mama's lost!"

I assured the girls that she wasn't and went out to find her. The hen had no sense of place; a fence was just something to fly over, so I felt certain that she was close by.

Then, I had an unsettling thought. Several times, I'd shooed her out of my fishing boat. She loved feasting on crickets, and would search for those that escaped from the cricket box after my fishing trips. The afternoon before, I had gone fishing.

I wondered: was Little Mama in the boat when I left? Had she flown out unnoticed at the lake? I hoped not. With all the predators roaming the woods around that lake, she couldn't have survived the night.

The kids called until they were hoarse, and I became convinced that what I suspected really had happened. There was only one thing to do: go to the lake. All the way, the girls held each other, staring straight ahead, and asking, "How much longer, Daddy, how much longer?"

When we neared the lake, I tried to prepare them for the worst. Even if the hen hadn't been blown out during the long drive, she had probably wandered off into the woods and got lost or killed. Warning them was futile. Adults' hope is just hope; children's hope is more like faith.

At the lake's edge, the girls began calling, "Little Mama, Little Mama, we've come to get you!" We looked everywhere, but there was no sign of the hen.

Then we heard it — Little Mama's familiar squawk. Right above us, perched on a tree limb, was the Rhode Island Red. She flapped down, let herself be hugged by the girls, and got in the pickup, just like she was one of us — which she was.

Little Mama lived to a ripe old age, raised many more broods, and was always my daughters' finest feathered friend. Like all mothers, the hen had a sense of duty, and she fulfilled it.

Every May, on Mother's Day, to honour the great lady who brought me into this world, I place flowers on her grave. She had a sense of duty — motherhood — and she fulfilled it. She still does. When I need her, I can always find her … in my heart.

Which brings to mind something one of my three girls said that day as the five of us rode home from the lake: "I'm so happy! Little Mama's found!"

Prayer: Almighty Father, teach us to be ever mindful that our mothers are among the holiest blessings that You have bestowed upon us. Amen.

Slow down! That was my New Year's resolution. As Wordsworth would say, "The world is too much with us." Even as I slide down the slippery, senescent, sixth-decade slope of life, I still scurry sunup to sundown, as if I won't sleep to wake again.

How haste harms is a lesson I should have learned years ago, when my hobby was fishing. I had a small boat and motor, a pole, a paddle, and a bait box. On the lake, rat race gave way to snail pace, and I had fun, whether the fish bit or not.

But then one day, I noticed other anglers with large, fast boats, racks of rods, fish finders, and trolling motors. They skittered around like water bugs in a puddle. If fishing was slow in one spot, they sped to another.

I gave in to temptation, bought a big boat, loaded it with accessories, and began racing from one end of the lake to the other, never slowing down to enjoy my hobby. Fishing became stressful, a water-borne rat race.

I longed for my little boat — the one I could tie to a tree and fish for hours, listening to the waves' gentle lap, buzzing insects, and chirping birds … becoming one with nature.

I began another hobby, gardening, and vowed not to ruin it with unnecessary bells-and-whistles accessories, and by not hurrying.

All life is learning, and gardens are ideal classrooms. Gardeners soon learn that their hobby is a metaphor for life, where they experience contentment, frustration, disappointment, joy, hard work, and relaxation.

A conscientious gardener is an artist whose medium is the proper mix of soil, water, sunshine, and living things. Like all artists, he learns that worthwhile creations don't come easily. He learns to arrange priorities and to concentrate on one task at a time rather than flitting in several directions at once. As his skills increase, he learns that by breaking big jobs down into smaller, more manageable parts, he can achieve the desired result with a minimum of frustration and counterproductive effort.

When a gardener fully grasps the parallels between gardening and life, he realizes that a well-tended garden, like a well-tended life, nurtures his mental and emotional well-being, which in turn provides strength of spirit, enabling him to cope with life's heartaches, sorrows, pain, and disappointments. The things a gardener grows help him to grow in his understanding of the glory, power, majesty, and creativity of the Gardener of the universe.

At day's end, the gardener/artist turns from his palette, looks with an approving eye at his work, and is satisfied with his slow, steady workmanship. With a deep sense of accomplishment, he can look back on a day well spent and gain a clear understanding of what poet Robert Service meant in the last stanza of his poem, "Each Day A Life":

O that all Life were but a Day,
Sunny and sweet and sane!
And that at Even I might say:
"I sleep to wake again."

Prayer: Merciful Father, teach us to tend our lives as we would a garden, to sow in it the gifts Thou hast given us, and to nurture them so that, like the grain of mustard seed, they grow to their fullness, and become pleasing in Thy sight. Amen.

A favourite quotation from Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin In The Sun, came to mind:

Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning — because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.

The day before, one of my daughters and I had quarrelled bitterly. I'd expended much time, effort, and expense doing something for her, and instead of gratitude, I got hurtful words for not doing more. While I'd "done good and made things easy" for her, she'd ignored the "hills and valleys" I'd come through. Broken-hearted, I plodded on.

Then I heard a familiar greeting. It was the one-legged mockingbird I'd named Montague, who hangs out in the parking lot of the beautiful old Presbyterian Church I pass each morning. When nobody is astir but him and me, Monty alights near the sidewalk and rasps raucously. After bobbing and flapping awkwardly to balance on his spindly leg, he throws back his head, fills his throat, and chirps loud enough to rankle the rooster Chanticleer.

While I felt sorry for myself, the bird, to quote the poet W.B. Yeats, sang louder, "for every tatter in its mortal dress." His cheerful spirit brought to mind this verse:
Matthew 6:26 – Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? (KJV)

Then I remembered more Scripture:
Galatians 6:9 – And let us not weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. (KJV)

Monty remembered what I'd forgotten: a sure way to feel better is to help someone else feel better. My opportunity was just a short distance from Monty's church.

Often, I'd seen the old gentleman fetching the morning paper. Grasping the step's handrail, he carefully worked his way down to the long walk across his yard. When he reached the paper, he would bend, painfully it seemed, pick it up, straighten slowly, and plod back to his home. Perhaps he lived alone, and perhaps had "done good and made things easy" for loved ones who moved on and left him behind. I thought, "Monty, tomorrow, I'm going to make the old gent feel the way you make me feel."

Putting the newspaper on the man's porch has become part of my dawn routine. One morning, I found a "smiley face" card with two words scrawled inside: "Thank you!"

What the old man said to me, I say to the one-legged bird: "Thank you, Montague."

Prayer: Almighty Father, teach us to overcome our own unhappiness and misfortune by seeking opportunities to brighten the lives of others, to serve them, and thus to serve You. Amen.

It was four o'clock in the morning on a moonless, muggy night — just the way I wanted it. With 240 pounds of bulging blubber and mushy muscles on a five-foot, eleven-inch frame, I wanted no one to see me trying to jog.

At the high school track's starting line, I punched my stopwatch and groaned into a trot, trying to banish thoughts of rapidly overpowering fatigue by reflecting on the three simultaneous events that led to my being here at such an early hour.

One, two, three cruel strikes — and I was out. Strike one: In the home we built, my blue-eyed, brunette bombshell bride left a goodbye note, and little else. Strike two: A freakish lawn mower accident severed my right big toe and rendered the next toe useless. Strike three: I had metamorphosed from the outdoor, active type to a sedentary sofa slob. One day I was a lean, athletic male who had attracted the attention of a gorgeous female, much to the envy of my tennis team pals; the next day, I was a fat, divorced, lazy, lame loser.

Staggering and wheezing down the track, battling nausea and fatigue, I completed one lap. Then, while walking another lap, I lost my composure and wept in gushes, feeling sorry for myself, bemoaning my handicap, but realizing down deep that it was only part of the problem, a part that could be overcome. Little did I know then that this painful, early-hour experience was, for me, the beginning of one of the most difficult journeys humans make: the journey within.

Somehow, I rallied enough self-discipline to maintain my punishing pre-dawn practices, and even set what seemed at the time to be an impossible goal: to come to the track someday and run five miles without stopping.

Running caused the foot to ache, and favouring it made my stride awkward, but I kept putting bad foot and good foot in front of each other, remembering that winning is no more than this: to rise each time you fall. I also remembered a few lines from a poem:

If you think you'll lose, you've lost.
For out in the world we find
Success begins with a fellow's will;
It's all in the state of mind.

Life's battles don't always go
To the strongest or fastest man;
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the one who thinks he can.

Walter D. Wintle

The five-mile goal came and went. Then it was ten; then a half-marathon. Finally, I was in great shape and confident enough to enter my first really big race, the Mardi Gras Marathon — a 26-mile jaunt across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway from Covington, Louisiana, to New Orleans. The time on the big clock at the finish line was awful and unimportant. I finished the race: I won.

My triple dose of adversity was bitter medicine to swallow, but it healed me. Through adversity, I had come to know myself; I completed the journey within. Three strikes, I'm out? No — Three strikes, I'm in!

Prayer: Merciful Father, in the difficult journeys we must run, without and within, please lead our steps aright. Amen.

During ginning season, one-eyed Deacon hauled cotton seed to the oil mill. Between trips, he helped me with my after-school and weekend chore — hammering together metal ties and buckles used to bind bales of cotton.

I liked the old man, but his glass eye made me uneasy. Cornflower blue, it neither matched the brown one, nor were the two orbs synchronized. The good eye bulged like a bulldog's, while its store-bought mate floated constantly up, down, sideways.

One day when he was helping me, I asked how he lost the eye. He recounted a bizarre boyhood mishap involving frogs. He claimed they were the devil incarnate and had cast a curse upon him, causing the eye to go bad. He was terrified of them. The devil didn't let me forget that.

One Sunday morning, I was lolling on the porch of Dad's country store. He was in back, doing paperwork. The truck scales were beside the office, and having nothing better to do, I crawled under them. A goodly number of frogs — incarnate Beelzebubs — resided there, and I stuffed a dozen or so in a sack.

As I crawled out, Deacon pulled up to the store in his old Kaiser. He was headed to church. While pumping gas, he removed his coat, hung it on a porch nail, and went inside to pay.

Why I would ever be unkind to Deacon, I'll never know. He was always kind to me, but I just couldn't resist. Satan and I dumped the frogs in his coat pockets.

The old man came out, handed me an RC Cola and a Moon Pie, patted me benevolently on the head, threw on his coat, and fired up the Kaiser. I felt awful, but it was too late.

A quarter mile down the road, the Kaiser careened crazily and lurched to a stop. Out tumbled Deacon, flinging off the coat and freeing its amphibious occupants. Dad walked out on the porch about the time Deacon limped up.

"What happened to your car?" Dad asked.

Both brown and blue eyes glared at me as the old man struggled to catch his breath.

"I don't know, Boss," he said. "Sumpin' come a-loose and it started switchin' on me." Dad chuckled and walked off.

Those who forgive most shall be most forgiven. Deacon forgave me, but not all the way.

"How much you got saved up from workin' for Boss?" he asked.

"Forty-five dollars," I said, shamefully bowing my head.

"Well, I ain't never wearin' my old coat again, and that's 'bout enough to buy a new one," he said.

"I'll go git the money for you right now, but why didn't you tell Dad what really happened?" I asked.

With kindness glimmering in both blue and brown eyes, he said, "Enough bad stuff happened today. If I told Boss what you done, they'd uh been a killin' too."

As the old man ambled toward his old car, I heard him mumbling a verse of Scripture: "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

Prayer: For forgiveness in place of judgement, we give You thanks, O God. Lead us to forgive others as we have been forgiven. Help us to avoid compounding evil. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.