Yesterday’s post contained an untruth. Last night I went back and read a sentence that claimed a previous unfamiliarity with the reality that God can meet us everywhere, when in actuality I’ve always known intellectually that God can meet us anywhere and everywhere.  This reality has only become experientially truer in recent days, thanks to this mommy’s potty…

  Walter Brueggemann’s review of Douglas John Hall’s latest book, Waiting for Gospel: An Appeal to the Dispirited Remnants of Protestant “Establishment” (Cascade), in the current issue of The Christian Century, sums up well the depressing state of the mainstream American church: Brueggemann describes the first part of Douglas’ book as a critique of “the systemic reductionism…

I’ve been stalling on the subject of obedience: just the term makes me a bit squeamish, and I’m not sure where this discomfort comes from. Maybe my squeamishness is the result of having grown up singing in church one too many rounds of that cheesy, old hymn, Trust and Obey; maybe it is the outgrowth of…

I’ve coined “the Dover Principle” by way of our recent visit to my in-laws in Boston. The Dover Principle states this: a three-day limit to visits with extended family is good for everybody.  Visits exceeding three days overstay the welcome and invite unnecessary drama.  (Besides, don’t good things happen on Day 3? You know, “third…

I love reading the obituaries in The Economist.  They’re often such clever and insightful portraits of human nature in its myriad of expressions. The most recent issue features legendary jazz musician Dave Brubeck, for whom jazz improv was in the blood.  Brubeck “couldn’t live without performing, because the rhythm of jazz, under all his extrapolation…

“Everything in moderation,” I like to remind myself, when reaching for the egg nog and the sugar cookies at this time of year. If truth be told, I can tend to take the same approach with religion.  Extremes scare me. You may identify: most of us can agree that killing people in the name of…

My husband would be the first to tell you I have the directional sense of a squirrel. There is an advantage to this handicap: if my intuition tells me to travel in one direction, I can safely assume that I need to be heading the opposite way. This reality becomes that much more funny when…

Louis CK once again has me laughing, this time with his rendition of Abe Lincoln on last week’s “Saturday Night Live.”  If you missed the clip, here it is again.  (Be forewarned: in typical Louis CK fashion, there is a good amount of explicit language.) With respect to the many awkward conversations Abe has with slave…

“This nation is the hope of the earth,” Republican candidate Mitt Romney said in passionate closing remarks at last night’s third and final presidential debate. The statement for a moment filled me with great pride, and maybe I’m not alone.  I suspect most voters like to hear that the country they love really is the…

The below video appeared on Andrew Sullivan’s “The Dish“- another of Alan Watts’ transformative lectures set to pictures.  It’s worth your two minutes watching it. Watts begins by posing this question to his students:  “What if money was no object?” Sullivan, quoting Chris Higgins, writes: “A central realization, which Watts alludes to here, is that…

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