Words can hurt. Having childhood tears dismissed with sarcasm, “real men don’t cry,” proved that to me early in life. Even truthful words can…
Postville I: Undocumented Workers, Immigration & Justice.
Community / Faith / Pluralistic World
Everything changed for Postville on a morning in May. At 10 a.m., immigration agents descended en masse upon the tiny Iowa town. They arrived…
Bored By Life, By God
Culture / Ordinary Life / Spirituality
I’ve been thinking about what we Christians experience when we read Scripture. On the one hand, we believe it to be God’s revelation of…
Everything Is Broken
Maturity and Flourishing / Music / Safe Place
Sometimes the simplest songs are best. I'm not thinking of simplistic music, the sort of mindless jingles that assault us in service of consumerist…
A One-Way Trip Into Space
“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new…
The Wonderful Freedom to Fail
Faith / Ordinary Life / Visual Art
Speaking at the 2009 Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) conference allowed me to attend some fascinating presentations. New York artist Makoto Fujimura, for…
Cocoa Crispies Christianity
God in a bowl When told that nature reveals the glory of God, Woody Allen replied that he only saw a giant restaurant. Fair…
Moments of Perfection…Almost
Community / Ordinary Life / Work and Rest
Have you ever experienced this? Occasionally something occurs which seems to carry not a single flaw. Amidst all the brokenness of life an oasis…
Sin that Afflicts the Righteous
Faith / Maturity and Flourishing / Spirituality
When I was twenty-five years old and a graduate student in Baltimore, I entered Johns Hopkins Hospital for surgery on my knee. An old…
Behind the Food We Eat
I’ve been doing some reading on food—where it comes from and how it comes to us. In her book, Animal Vegetable Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver…