I just returned from posting letters in our mailbox, 3oo feet from our house. It’s a cold, foggy day, and over the crunch of gravel under my feet I heard the sibilant song of a little bird. Five little notes. They transported me to spring. I spotted the bird — a drab grey thing perched…

In the highly controlled, conformist society into which I was born (the United States), how successful — and normal — you are depends on certain factors, many of which have to do with participating in groups. Indeed, one of the key arguments that homeschoolers — who have a reputation for being radically different and independent…

Has this ever happened to you? You’re in a social situation, somebody asks you how you’re doing, and since the most significant event in your life lately has been the loss of your job, or the diagnosis of a serious disease, or your teenager’s totaling the car but mercifully walking away unscathed, you mention this.…

Some days, I’d prefer to leave the amusement park and just go someplace else. It is on these days that I ask God, “Do you not care, anymore, about your people? Are you just going to let them die, asleep, complacently living a life of outward ablutions and inward materialism?” I was in Costco the…

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