I have friends I respect whose kids have played (and some who do play) travel ball, and I mean no offense to them by this post. Nor am I categorically condemning their decisions and choices. I am offering these thoughts for parents who are considering whether to put their kids on a “competitive” team, or a “travel-ball” team, or a “tournament” team, or whatever it may be called in your sport and locale.

Don’t get me wrong: I love competition. I love excellence. And I want to provide the best competitive opportunities I can for my own kids.

I played two years of major college baseball at the University of Arkansas, and I’ve been coaching my sons in baseball and basketball for the last 7 years or so. These reflections grow out of my own experience playing and coaching and watching other families. My thoughts will be mainly applied to baseball, but I think they are valid for basketball, volleyball, soccer, lacrosse, swimming, and whatever else.

For the first time since the Christian church split into West and East in 1054 over issues of papal authority and the source of the Holy Spirit, a Roman Catholic pope and the heavyweight of the Eastern Orthodox Church will sit down together.

Pope Francis will meet with Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill for several hours tomorrow in a neutral location: Cuba's Havana airport. The two will end the meeting by signing a joint declaration, according to the official announcement.

The Russian church contains the majority of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians.

Maybe I’m amnesiac, but does this year’s political season seem more outrageous than ever? By outrageous I mean the outrage, the heat, the shrill. Why have so many candidates put on red or blue ties and then wrapped themselves in razor wire before coming to the podium?

The campaign season is already interminably long; now it is also despicably harsh. Debate stages have become debate cages. Cable news segments and social media replay the most obscene, malicious and vitriolic one-liners. I can’t recall so many asterisks replacing the letters of a politician’s words that for the sake of decency can’t be said by respectable journalists.

Has shock and argument culture won? Is our society doomed to mean-spirited debates and divisions that get only deeper?...With every passing headline in this election cycle, I wonder. I lament.

There is no work quite like Ph.D. work. Those who’ve completed the degree know exactly what I’m talking about. You must set aside five or so years of your life to research and write on a topic, ending your labors with a dissertation that makes a unique contribution to your field of study.

The Ph.D. is known as a “terminal degree” because it is the highest degree one can earn, but all who’ve completed one knows it can feel terminal in other ways.

Shockingly, the three letters most associated with the Doctor of Philosophy degree is not Ph.D. They are A.B.D.—all but dissertation. Half of those who undertake the Ph.D. degree never complete it, with most stalling out during the dissertation phase, thus becoming known as A.B.D.

[I]n recent years, a number of companies have gone one step further: They’ve hired spiritual leaders to serve on their staffs. Though slightly less trendy than nap rooms and yoga classes, workplace chaplaincies are another attempt to make workers more productive by catering to their “whole” selves. Sometimes, these chaplains serve as spiritual social workers, advising staffers about everything from divorce to cancer. They might conduct weddings or funerals; they’ll often refer people to local churches and, at times, professional psychologists.

People find Jesus everywhere, cubicles and factory lines included. But why would a corporation bother providing guidance to workers as they search for him? What’s in it for them?