American Idol: A Guide for Hearing God’s Voice, Part 2

Last updated on: February 1, 2015 at 12:20 pm By Jan Vallone

Continued from yesterday. While many desires prompt goodness, others trigger evil and thus can’t be signs of our vocation to love. Ignatius called these desires disordered, meaning that a God-given longing—a holy desire—has become perverted. If you’re a contestant on American Idol, you may have the holy desires to uplift your fans through your singing and to earn a living for your family. But if you sabotage another entrant to better your chances of prevailing, your holy desires have become... Read more

American Idol: A Guide for Hearing God’s Voice, Part 1

Last updated on: February 1, 2015 at 12:22 pm By Jan Vallone

I love American Idol and could hardly wait until this month when the fourteenth season began. I’ve watched it all through the years: those judged by Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell, and Randy Jackson; those when Kara DioGuardi stepped in; the stints of Steven Tyler, Mariah Carey, and Nicki Minaj; the reigns of Harry Connick, Jr., Jennifer Lopez, and Keith Urban. This penchant isn’t easy to admit. My friends are mostly highbrows—educators, writers, and lawyers whose favorite resting pastimes are reading... Read more

Childhood Cinema Redux

Last updated on: January 21, 2015 at 11:50 am By Tania Runyan

Over our recent winter break, my husband and I introduced our two older kids to some comedies from our youth. The criteria were simple: streamable through Netflix, not too much bloodshed or T&A, and shorter than, say, 100 minutes. Revisiting a childhood movie as an adult can be a disarming experience. I never understood all the fuss about A Christmas Story, for example, until I watched it as a parent. I screamed with laughter when the mom shut little Randy... Read more

The Birmingham Project

Last updated on: January 16, 2015 at 3:46 pm By Peggy Rosenthal

I was looking into the eyes of a black girl around thirteen years old. She looked back, her eyes pensive and a bit sullen. Then I shifted my gaze to the black woman seated as if next to her, about fifty years her senior. The woman’s eyes were those of a survivor, the eyes of someone who has lived through and somehow managed to transcend unimaginable pain. What this woman from Birmingham, Alabama had survived was the racial violence that... Read more

It’s Time to Derail the Gravy Train

Last updated on: January 15, 2015 at 4:18 pm By Tony Woodlief

Earlier this week we saw yet again what happens when thousands of the unemployed, living off subsidies from taxpayers, decide to take their grievances to the streets. This latest assault on decency and order happened in Columbus, Ohio, but the list of cities victimized in this way is long and growing. It’s often peaceful towns that are targeted—communities filled with law-abiding people who work for a living, who follow the rules, and who deserve better protection from law enforcement. The... Read more

Breaking Up with My Job

Last updated on: January 14, 2015 at 7:47 pm By Caroline Langston

Last week, I left the job where I have worked for the past seven-and-three-quarter years. There’s not much to say about the job itself—that’s the other life I don’t write about in this forum, the one where I live under another name entirely, although in this day of the online permanent record, you can connect all the dots in a minimum of keystrokes on Google. There’s also little to say because it was a very good job, the kind of... Read more

Hitch Your Wagon to a Want Ad

Last updated on: January 12, 2015 at 12:14 pm By A. G. Harmon

The year has turned, and I have yet another chapter in the annals of things I’ve learned from farming in the quasi-way that I do it—on breaks in my teaching schedule and long weekends away from work. Last summer, I found an old wagon off the side of the road on the back of our place. It had been abandoned there around twenty or thirty years ago, forged together by a man who was once a metalworker, long gone now.... Read more

St. Francis and the Bloody-Nosed Friar

Last updated on: January 12, 2015 at 11:40 am By Morgan Meis

Staying with friends in Silver Lake, Los Angeles for the holidays, I’ve taken to walking down the Micheltorena Street steps in the mornings, ten or fifteen minutes before Mass at eight o’clock. The steps wind down between the houses in the foothills, terminating at Sunset Boulevard. They are forlorn in the way of all empty places within busy cities. Soon enough, I arrive at Saint Francis of Assisi Church on Golden Gate Avenue, just off Sunset. The church itself is... Read more

Monasticism In Lockdown America, Part 4: Asceticism

Last updated on: January 9, 2015 at 6:42 pm By Chris Hoke

Today’s post continues a monthly series on my experiences introducing monastic practices to those I encounter in jail ministry. Read last month’s post here. Monks in the Orthodox tradition have long believed that God’s love is unchanging, constant, like the light of the sun. We do not need to appease a deity’s anger or perform well to turn the light of God’s affection and gaze upon us. It’s just there, divine mercy blazing away, pouring down all the time. The... Read more

Wearing a Coat of Many Colors

Last updated on: January 9, 2015 at 10:33 pm By D.L. Mayfield

Around eight years ago, I bought a coat. I hardly ever bought brand-new clothes, and this was a real splurge on a Bible College-student budget. The coat was from Target, and it was a bright-orange corduroy plaid. I loved how it made me stand out amid the sea of black pea coats in the dreary Pacific Northwest winter. I come from a background of believing that fashion isn’t important at all. The larger Evangelical culture routinely rejects the body and... Read more