The Kingdom Comes One Lonely Step at a Time—Until We Are Not Lonely Any More
I started bringing my own grocery bags to the store in the early 1990s. For many years, mine was a lonely habit. Although grocery stores in liberal Washington, D.C., stocked reusable bags for purchase, very few people used them. So when I got to the checkout line, the cashiers and baggers were often flummoxed, and sometimes obviously annoyed, by my bringing my own bags. They would ask, "What are these for?" If I had three bags' worth of groceries and only brought two bags, they would say, "But … [Read More...]
Factory Disasters in Bangladesh, Consumerism, and Original Sin
I approach buying clothes for my children with the same compulsive attention to my kids' individual needs and wants that I bring to Christmas gift buying. Focused attention to my kids' clothing needs is, for me, as much an embodiment of maternal love as cooking is for some moms. Finding a shirt that I just know one of the kids will love, zipping up a child's heavy fleece jacket on a cold morning, watching them tear out the front door on the first really warm spring day in new shorts and sandals, … [Read More...]
Does God Hate Clutter? I Used to Think So, But Now I’m Not So Sure
This piece was originally published at the Daily Episcopalian on October 4, 2010. I am posting again in honor of my mother-in-law Ruby, who died one year ago today. In my 20s, I attended a church that embraced material simplicity and detachment from stuff long before it became trendy. We engaged regularly in soul-searching conversations about our attachment to possessions. One friend’s long-ago purchase of a $900 wing chair continued to haunt him as a symbol of material excess. He talked … [Read More...]
At Home in a Place Where Imperfect Bodies Are the Norm
In honor of warmer weather and its attendant swimsuits and more revealing clothing, I am reposting this piece reflecting on how it feels to be in a place where bodily imperfections are the norm. One day several years ago, I was in the hot tub at our local indoor pool, stretching after swimming laps. A class for parents and infants was about to start, so moms and dads were gathering near the hot tub, their wide-eyed little ones wrapped in towels. A tall, tanned young mother strolled in wearing … [Read More...]
The Summer When I Didn’t Cherish Time with My Kids
Note: I wrote this in the summer of 2009. I am reposting it here as summer approaches, as a reminder (to myself, above all) of how radically life can change us in surprising ways. I used to despise the summertime, for reasons I explain in this post. Now, I have become like a cat, chasing the sun through the day, craving its light and warmth for the relief it brings to body and spirit. Most days over the past couple of weeks, since spring has finally sprung here in New England, you would find … [Read More...]
Articulating the Mystery of Faith: Christian Wiman’s “My Bright Abyss”
We Christians are sometimes taken to task for the way that we, when embroiled in difficult conversations about whether or not God exists, chalk things up to "mystery." Our atheist/agnostic conversation partners see this (rightly, in some cases) as a cop out, as a way of saying, "I don't really understand why I believe, but I do believe, so I'll just say it's a mystery, which will end the argument because what makes a mystery mysterious is that it remains unknown and unknowable, unexplained and … [Read More...]
Progressive Christians Do Care About Abortion: A Response to Rachel Held Evans
Blogger/author Rachel Held Evans wrote an excellent post last week titled Why Progressive Christians Should Care About Abortion. She traced her own history, from embracing an evangelical pro-life stance to her gradual understanding of abortion's complexities, and recognition that those who are "pro-life" do not always support policies that sustain non-fetal lives, such as those of Iraqi civilians or victims of gun violence. She noted that criminalizing abortion does not necessarily make it … [Read More...]
How Mother’s Day 2006 Was the Beginning of the Rest of My Life
This is the story I told at this past weekend's inaugural Speak Up storytelling event in Hartford. In my next email newsletter, I will include a link to the Speak Up podcast, which includes my telling this story to a live audience (with considerable more humor than comes through in the written version), along with six other fabulous, funny, moving stories told by warm and witty storytellers. To add your name to my mailing list for very occasional newsletters (four or five per year), visit my web … [Read More...]
Parents-to-Be Have More Choices Than Ever, But We Can’t Choose Our Way Out of Pain
Jennifer Gilmore’s story is enough to scare anyone away from open adoption. (It also provides the best supporting evidence ever for my contention that "Why don't you just adopt?" might be one of the stupidest questions known to humankind.) After years of fertility treatments , Gilmore and her husband settled on an open domestic adoption. And then everything that could go wrong did. Numerous birthmothers selected them—and then the couple would learn that the birthmother didn’t really … [Read More...]
Why I Don’t Call Myself a “Cancer Survivor” (& Why We Should All Think Twice Before Donning a Pink Ribbon)
Three autumns ago, I walked into a radiologist's office after a follow-up mammogram. He pointed to my films on a computer screen, and before he spoke, I knew I had cancer. I saw the trouble clearly—a cluster of opaque white dots in the upper portion of my right breast. My cancer, a type called ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), is curable through surgery and radiation. Although my two surgeries weren't a walk in the park (particularly the first, in which my wound was unable to hold stitches, … [Read More...]
A Different Take on Why Bad Things Happen to Good People
Questions around suffering and pain are stock in trade for me as a writer. I know that I can't stand most Christian justifications (i.e., bullshit) for why terrible things happen. I know that even well-thought-out theological arguments around how God can be all-powerful, all-loving, and yet allow great suffering still fall far short for me. I believe that great good can come out of suffering, but I don't believe that God either orchestrates or even actively allows specific instances of … [Read More...]
Questions Remain About the “Controversy in Candy Land”
On Saturday, Jana Riess posted a piece on her Religion News Service blog raising questions about whether, in a recent blog post about the feminization and sexualization of characters in the Candy Land board game, writer Peggy Orenstein used images and ideas, without attribution, from blogger Rachel Marie Stone's post on the same topic. Jana raises three red flags: 1) the fact that Orenstein used three of Rachel's images without permission or attribution, 2) the similarity of language/terminology … [Read More...]
[Me & My Naturopath] On Being Unfixable in a World Obsessed with Fixing
A few weeks ago, I took a detour from my naturopathy focus to go see my orthopedist. My right knee (which I still thought of as my "good" knee, because unlike the other knee, it has never needed surgery) had become very painful, and I wanted to see if there was an acute injury that was causing the pain. There is no acute injury. There is, instead, a complete absence of cartilage. Bone is scraping against bone. No wonder it hurts. As I talked to my orthopedist and his PA about my options, a … [Read More...]
On Silence and Simplicity & Their Opposites (Or, Why I Have Decided to Keep Writing Despite the Prospect of a “Real” Job and a Paycheck)
My blog has been silent for several weeks now, and perhaps some of you have wondered why. (Perhaps you haven't, in which case this post might not suit your fancy. I promise more substance in future posts). There are straightforward reasons for my silence, such as the kids' week-long school vacation, preceded by a week of early school dismissals for parent-teacher conferences, and a nasty virus that kept one child home from school just prior to the vacation and two of us under the weather … [Read More...]
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