One of my favorite writers, Marilynne Robinson, once said in an interview with Bill Moyers that human beings “exist wildly in excess of any sort of survival mode that could be posited for them.” She said that if you use animal behavior as a model or correlation to human behavior, “you’ve simply excluded everything that
I don’t know many writers who only read one book at a time. (If you are one who does, I’d be fascinated to make your acquaintance and would try to question you about the reasoning behind your reading practice without making you feel as if you were a specimen under a microscope.) I have piles,
Many of us are closing down 2016 with a keen awareness of the darkness all around us in the world today—a bitter and divisive election that exposed a great deal of ugliness in our nation and perhaps even in ourselves; world events that stagger us in their brutality even as we want to look away—Aleppo,
By my desk, there is written on a green index card this quote that I see every day as I sit down to write: “Say the truest thing you know, line by line.” In Writing I read it in a guide to writing poetry by Suzanne U. Rhodes, The Roar on the Other Side. My
They saw me leave the house. The two boys looked to be about fourteen years old. They had already passed my house and were walking down the middle of the street as I climbed into my car to pick up my kids from school. Something inside told me to wait a few minutes and watch.
Our caravan of white Toyota sedans wound its way slowly through the looted city on its way to the banks of the swollen, muddy Congo River. Some fires were still smoldering, broken glass all that remained of some shops and businesses—even doors had been pulled off their hinges and hauled away. Everywhere along the roadside
I had the joy and privilege this past Saturday of being able to attend the annual Families in Global Transition (FIGT) conference, held in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. As many other attendees noted, it was a beautiful thing to spend time with others—complete strangers from all over the world—with whom I could immediately connect because of
A few thoughts today on forgiveness: Brené Brown said that Christ’s love began to make more sense to her when she heard a leader at her church explain that in order for forgiveness to occur, something has to die. There has to be a death—of our expectations, our pride, our thirst for revenge, our control—before there
I’m interrupting my series on paradox to invite you deeper into the Advent season with this poem. It’s a prayer-cry for those of us who need to remember how desperately we need this Child to come and enter into our brokenness, grief, confusion and sin. How desperately we need this Gift. The Branch of Your
I’m fascinated by something I’ve been reading lately by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It’s this paradox: “Whoever can not be alone should beware of community; whoever cannot stand being in community should beware of being alone” (from Life Together, 82-83). Willa Cather says something similar: “Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship” (Shadows on the