This past Saturday morning, I enjoyed the delightful and humbling good fortune of being honored by the Bethany Seventh-day Adventist Church on Prospect Avenue in New Cassel.

Although I was raised in and continue to practice the Roman Catholic faith, their is something universal in the act of worship that transcends specific religions and actually has an awful lot to do -- or should -- with the business I'm in.

After high school, like a great many young people, I fell away from the church -- not for any dire reason, it was just that people, at that age, begin to focus on other things.

In the years before I became the editor of this newspaper, however, I began to arch back toward my church in search of what I soon came to understand as "communion." Not communion in the traditional sense of the Holy Eucharist, but rather, communion with my fellow men and women. What I sought and found when I got back to attending church with regularity was a new and profound connection with my neighbors -- both in a religious sense and in a far more secular sense.

Through faith I found a way to bridge the communication and identity gap that so often exists between us.

In practicing my craft over the past several years -- with the help, I must say, of a terrifically wonderful and loving person, my darling Beth -- I have tried, on a daily, even hourly basis, to continue to bridge that gap. Sometimes I'm the bearer of good news, sometimes bad, but ultimately what I am engaged in is an ongoing quest to communicate and to be the medium of communication among the various facets of our diverse and dynamic community.

It is for that reason that this award -- which I was actually supposed to receive a week earlier -- is particularly meaningful. I take it not as an end in itself, not as a pat on the back for deeds done in the past, but as an exhortation to do more and better in the weeks and months ahead.

I thank you, members of the Bethany Seventh-day Adventist Church, with all sincerity, and as I said on Saturday morning, please do feel free to communicate with me at every opportunity... and let me hear the good news, of the positives and the triumphs... because the bad news already has enough people to deliver it.