Given the incredible talents Chris and Doris Hall possess, along with the incredible blessings Chris and Doris Hall bring, I would not….even for a moment….seek to be frivolous at their expense. Meaning that this morning’s title (“Are Chris and Doris Hall in Their Right Minds?”) is a serious question rather than a tongue-in-cheek quip. A question I intend to answer. With an answer that is chock-full of meaning.

Let me introduce you to Bill Muehl….Grosse Pointer by location….Episcopalian by confirmation….University of Michigan trained lawyer by vocation….who was rerouted by God in 1944 to New Haven, Connecticut, where he ended up teaching forty years’ worth of young mumblers at Yale Divinity School how to preach. Including me.

While I find it hard to keep up with local press coverage, my friend David Mosser manages to sift through news dispatches from Great Britain. Which was how he learned, last November, about two British mental health workers who visited a female client, chatted for several minutes, decided she wasn’t interested in talking with them, and then left (presumably to fill out a case report in the car before continuing on to their next stop). What they somehow failed to observe was that she was dead.

Let me start with a disclaimer of sorts. I am not a grandfather. Neither do I sleep with a grandmother. Kris and I have two children. Our son, Bill, died nine years ago. Our daughter, Julie, presently lives and works in California. We often tell her that grandchildren would be nice. We drop hints about how much fun it would be to take a four-year-old to Disney World.