Ellen Painter Dollar
Fallow times are as necessary for writers as they are for fields and gardens. We see only silence and stagnation; we fail to recall the necessary preparation that’s happening under the surface. Read more
Fallow times are as necessary for writers as they are for fields and gardens. We see only silence and stagnation; we fail to recall the necessary preparation that’s happening under the surface. Read more
I will always remember that terrible June day in 2009. But I’ve reached a point now where I can breathe a little easier than I used to. I can think of all the other stories I can tell about my girl, and that she can tell about herself, stories that matter just as much as the story of her accident, if not more. Read more
While many Christians see paranormal activity as a threat to orthodoxy, surely those of us who believe that a dead man rose to life again after three days in a tomb can make room in our world for the possibility that loved ones will reach out to us from beyond the grave, that the love we shared continues as a real and powerful force in the world. Read more
What has changed since I had my first baby is that the divide between public and private has become far murkier; we must choose more deliberately between engagement and solitude, attention directed outward and inward, and fight to give ourselves fully to each pursuit at the proper time. Read more
As people aligned with a God who promises to do new things among us, to bring about no less than a new heaven and a new earth, we are called to question, to disturb, to explore—not to just quietly accept the status quo, slipping into the neat roles that others insist we fill. We are called to be misfits. Read more
When we moved from D.C. to Connecticut, we hoped to find a new community that would look a lot like the one we left behind. We never did. But we found what we needed most, which is a place where we belong. We learned that belonging isn't about shopping around to find a group of people just like us, or a place where we can check off all our requirements for an ideal community. Belonging is mostly about showing up, becoming disillusioned, and staying anyway. Read more
Besides making people feel defensive for experiencing the fundamentally human urge to conceive and bear a child (a defensiveness that makes helpful conversation difficult), the question “Why don’t you just adopt?” glosses over some important truths about adoption. Read more
If we wish to nurture writing that helps us ask and grapple with answers to the most difficult and necessary questions facing human beings, we must come up with other ways to compensate the writers willing to ask them, particularly as those writers must also endure virtual shaming at the hands of angry Internet mobs as the price of questioning assumptions and steering conversations in unfamiliar, challenging directions. Read more
Without the bright light of the resurrection, I would always believe the sadder stories. They are, after all, so much more common. Read more
The resurrection isn't so much something that we believe in, or don't. The resurrection is something God invites us to come and see—and then to live. Read more
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