Every year that we can, in the spirit of being slightly insane, we shove ourselves into the car and drive south to Texas as fast as we can in the fewest number of days. Then we extricate ourselves from the car and sit in the heat eating Mexican food and…well…that’s pretty much all we do. Then we shove ourselves back in the car and come crying back to the north, reminding ourselves that all is not lost, we can probably... Read more
I was going to rail on about packing and laundry, because that could be funny, right? I mean, it’s not that funny. It’s more just So Much Work, especially since I haven’t started the packing part. Took me a whole day to catch up the laundry. LOL. (That’s an ironic LOL, just to clarify.) Luckily, you’re saved from that because Huffpo came up with the amazing notion that Jesus, of course, is transgender. As I commented on Facebook, to quote... Read more
I’ve had a niggling sense, for some time now, that one of the biggest problems in America today is a deep seated, culturally cultivated humorlessness that is pervading every nook and cranny of our public discourse. Many evangelicals have been delighted, in recent days, by The Babylon Bee, the humor of which has surpassed easily the fading, flagging, not so funny any more Onion, which has been the go-to place for so much humor for more than a decade. But... Read more
I try to vary my podcast listening between the serious minded, the edifying, and the light and fluffy. It’s not all The Art of Manliness and James White Debates. To cleanse the palate I flip back and forth between Bon Appétit and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, with very small tastes of the Minimalists because, oh my word, I can’t take the moralizing tone for more than ten minutes at a time. I have so much to say about the... Read more
Boy have I got a lot to do today. That’s true every day, but on Mondays, our day off, the list always feels like a miniature apocalypse. ***************************************** Meant last week to put a good word in for Patheos’ Public Square. It’s about children this month, and their capacity to approach the divine. I’m there being a Christian and talking about Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, as many of you already saw. In a calm collected moment I’m going to... Read more
The vagaries of life being what they are, it so happened that I was in the church kitchen for a portion of time yesterday, helping some children to mix, and then try to form, small, flat rounds of dough, which I then cooked on the top of the stove. It was a horrifically sticky mess, and hard work for the children. Getting the dough to stick to itself and not to your own fingers seemed a monumental task. Some children... Read more
I have a busy day ahead of me, and need to be up and leaping about in all directions. But here are a few links before I go my merry way. First up, here’s this week’s podcast. We get all apocalyptic about Obama’s Decree of the Loo. Here’s my mother’s very delightful blog post this week. Here is Matt’s sermon from last week, excellent as always. Here is a really fine article about men being men and how that’s not... Read more
Amongst the many podcasts to which I have become addicted is the Art of Manliness Podcast. I listen to it as I putter about cooking and doing laundry and cleaning. Yesterday, indeed, I stood in the kitchen barefoot (though not pregnant, you will be sad to hear) concocting a vast pot of soup as my Usual Charitable Act for the church. There I was, a lady, in church, so perhaps a church lady, or, better yet, an Excellent Woman, cooking... Read more
Ever one or two minutes behind the latest “thing”, I only discovered yesterday, for the first time, the delightful new trend of “husband shaming”. You know. It started with dogs. The dog tore up the couch, and then the owner came home and hung a sign around the dog’s neck. “I tore up the couch today” reads the sign. And we all paused the finger as we scrolled through Facebook, and chuckled. Because Facebook is so great. And everyone loves... Read more
Editors’ Note: This article is part of the Patheos Public Square on The Spirituality of Children. Read other perspectives here. In the hot depths of the summer of 2002 I trudged up many narrow steps to the third floor of our new church. The stairway was steep and just before I caught my breath and landed in the light filled enormity of the attic, I turned to the right and entered into a room that felt, in its diminutive stature,... Read more
Preventing Grace
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