The downfall of getting back online and trying to avoid politics with a thumb-scrolling vice-grip is that I ran into something on Facebook called The Transformed Wife. It’s an account with a whole lot of likes and a curiously nineties feel to it. Felt transported back to a pre-blogging world of email forwards and floral notebooks. One post, in particular, generated a lot of heat and light on Twitter—the one about men preferring women without debt and without tattoos. Seems... Read more
One benefit of sitting around in transit—in cars and trains and planes and busses—is that I finally accumulated enough quiet minutes in a row to read a book I wanted to bring to your attention way back in May. You know, when it launched. But May blew by me and I was only part way through chapter one. And then June came and I was all the way into chapter three. And then July beat down the door and there... Read more
Good morning from bright, hot, humid Binghamton. Determined to enjoy the heat to the uttermost by listening to the children complain while hanging limply over the furniture. We woke up late and gathered our wits to podcast about having to fly, WOW Air, the World Cup, the Episcopal Church Convention, child rearing, the new Supreme Court judge nominee, what Africa has that America doesn’t, and poverty. It’s probably Epic, at least for this week. Let me see, do I have... Read more
Here I am, struggling into the day, groping in the dark for that first lifesaving gulp of Bewely’s, stretching out my mind for hope and consciousness, wondering what terrors rosy fingered dawn has in store for me. How will I shove myself into my Sabbath garb when it’s all piled up in the laundry? Where did I leave that thing that I needed to give to that person? Who was I supposed to talk to about that other thing but... Read more
Can you believe it’s Friday? Which means for me it’s all birthday all day. One That’s right, my oldest child, as I’ve already said, is going to be 16…no wait, is 16. Oh heck. Two Seriously, I am in favor of children growing up and leaving home and getting on with their lives. I don’t mourn when a child grows up from a baby to a toddler and a toddler to the bright fun of early childhood, and then into... Read more
The children are beginning to haul themselves into consciousness—a long day of wandering around the Museum of the Bible and then many hours in an enticing swimming pool has exhausted them—and I should leap up and throw all our stuff into the car so that we can once more return to “ordinary life” for a moment or two before carrying on to the next exciting episode. But before I do that let me pour myself another cup of oolong and... Read more
We have one more lovely day ahead of us here in fair Virginia. The crepe myrtle are blooming and the sky is clear and bright. Which means that the children are expecting to die of heat exhaustion—it got all the way up to 96 yesterday as we wandered up and down taking in the delights. By democratic process, after lunching on a verdant and expansive lawn, we turned our steps first to the Museum of Natural History, and then to... Read more
I love this so much. Besides the felicity of not having to read of the captions, and gathering in some tips to make my own life appear much cooler than it is, this click-baiting listicle illumines for me the charming nature of internet, of course, and of all human effort itself. These little snapshots, so painstakingly crafted, so cunningly devised, project to the wide world some kind of ordinary longing for beauty. Look at me gazing through this window. Look... Read more
It’s the summer and that means we are going to fling ourselves into the car and drive somewhere fun instead of keeping to the Usual Habit of podcast and links on this bright shiny Monday morning. We’re going to shake it all up and record sometime later in the week when both our voices aren’t cracking, and we can talk for more than three minutes without wheezing. I will, however, be on The Ride Home with John and Kathy later... Read more
This is an interesting and enlightening article, developing a more elegant theory than my own–that the West is plagued by psychological unhappiness because of too much material comfort. Rather, posits the author, the failing social contract is at the heart of all our misery. The fractured nature of modern life, of having to depend entirely on yourself for all your emotional, material, and social needs, of not knowing the person across the street any better than you know any of... Read more
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Preventing Grace
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