{"id":569,"date":"2008-04-18T23:31:21","date_gmt":"2008-04-18T23:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/04\/heaven-defined.html"},"modified":"2008-04-18T23:31:21","modified_gmt":"2008-04-18T23:31:21","slug":"heaven-defined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/04\/heaven-defined.html","title":{"rendered":"Heaven, defined"},"content":{"rendered":"

…when it’s finally warm enough for little boys to spend hours outside, puttering and digging.
\n…and then they do.
\nIt’s amazing how much happier they are when they have that freedom to be outdors, which, even the tameness of our backyard, seems to be a place with so much more excitement for them. It’s just dirt and sticks, sand and an open sky, but it absorbs them so much more deeply than almost anything they can find outside. Even though, when they are inside, no one instructs them what to do with their toys or directs them how to play, when they are outdoors, they have such a greater sense of freedom, even though they’re fenced in.
\nIt’s worth every filthy handprint or sand-dusted scalp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…when it’s finally warm enough for little boys to spend hours outside, puttering and digging. …and then they do. It’s amazing how much happier they are when they have that freedom to be outdors, which, even the tameness of our backyard, seems to be a place with so much more excitement for them. It’s just…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHeaven, defined - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/04\/heaven-defined.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Heaven, defined - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"…when it’s finally warm enough for little boys to spend hours outside, puttering and digging. …and then they do. 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It’s just…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/04\/heaven-defined.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-04-18T23:31:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Heaven, defined - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/04\/heaven-defined.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Heaven, defined - Via Media","og_description":"…when it’s finally warm enough for little boys to spend hours outside, puttering and digging. …and then they do. It’s amazing how much happier they are when they have that freedom to be outdors, which, even the tameness of our backyard, seems to be a place with so much more excitement for them. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}