In the spirit of yesterday’s post offering 4 tips for following your God-given dream (a.k.a. personal calling), I’m giving a shout-out of support to fellow saint and sinner Amy who quit her cushy corporate job at Starbucks to pursue her dream of writing, producing and acting in her very first film. Amy and I swam…

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is a short novel about a boy who follows his dream to find hidden treasure across the seas—only to discover that the treasure he sought was actually right under his nose where his dream first originated. It’s a strange and magical story for restless souls looking for “where their heart is.”…

  [A correction has been made to Joyce’s age in this latest version of the post.] And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. —1 Corinthians 13:13 Right now my father-in-law is waiting at the hospital for Joyce to die. Joyce is in her early nineties, and…

An audio version of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises has been keeping me company in the car; and has convinced me that Hemingway was a restless soul, too (by “restless,” I mean another soul looking for more purpose, more truth and more life). Set in post-World War 1 Paris, the book tells the story…

Today is momentous because I sent off the manuscript for GRACE STICKS to my editor. Another big note of thanks to fellow saint and sinner Michael Frost for his gracious foreword which he managed to muster seemingly effortlessly under short notice. In addition to being a lovely person, he is a gifted writer. If you…

…a town called “Fucking,” and the town is in Austria. The etymology of the name dates back to the sixth century when “Focko,” a Bavarian nobleman, named the town after himself. (I’ve always wondered about people who name towns after themselves. That’s a bit like writing a book and then dedicating it to yourself. Since…

This week my son has been teaching me about the importance of being transparent about our questions about God and life. I mentioned he was scared. He still is. The source of his fear, a giant foot on a rampage belonging to nobody but itself, has now morphed into Chuckie. (Remember the movies back in…

Early this morning, I was just drifting off into the halcyon waters of deep sleep REM when my son woke me up to say he was scared. I was non-plussed on a third consecutive night of one or another or both of my children waking me up to tell me of their fear. Mustering up…

It’s good to be back here at this intersection between life and God. While we were away, my husband picked up a large coffee table book about space. (It’s no wonder that he once nursed a dream of becoming an astronomer.) Every so often he’d blurt out in amazement at the size and scope of…

Greetings from Shelter Island, New York where I’m vacationing after the completion of the manuscript for Grace Sticks. (Next week I’ll be back to the regular schedule of 3-5 posts a week.) “Kemah” is the name of my family’s home here; the term is a Native American expression meaning “face into the wind.” On our last…

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