Good Morning, if anything like morning can be said to be good. Now that all the festivities are vaguely petering out—so sue me, I am not going to continue to party through January and February just because it’s Epiphany—we rousted ourselves from our overfed stupor and did a podcast finishing up that advent sermon. Turns out I don’t have an Elizabeth anointing, all I have is a pain in the neck. It’s all sparkle and shouting so you won’t want... Read more
Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, that auspicious moment when you begin eating those gorgeous cakes with the little plastic babies hidden inside them, and go on diligently until the beginning of lent. And not just cake—there are the kings, of course, and the bright star, and the house blessings. But what I want to ponder this morning is the business of God revealing himself, in Christ, to the whole world. As a way in, here is a petulant... Read more
Made it through nearly a whole week of a new year. Here are seven cool things from 2018 that will only get cooler in 2019. One-Older Children When you have little kids everyone always rolls their eyes and says, ‘just you wait.’ Then when you have four girls people practically fall over themselves to tell you how awful it’s going to be. This is a good thing to do, because basically you go into the whole project of raising children... Read more
I discovered something foolish on the internet this morning and thought you might like to know about it too. I collect these kinds of little sayings, for my own personal delight. Mostly I keep them buried in an electronic file so as not to embarrass or alarm anyone, but this one is too good not to share. Ready? Printed in big white letters on a background of dark red leaves we find these immortal words: When MINISTRY becomes a JOB... Read more
On the first day of the new year I read this depressing piece about Gandhi, and this long fascinating one about how archeologists and anthropologists are making sense of what happened when Columbus first came to the Americas. That and a lot of tweets about Louis CK and Donald Trump convinced me that of course, as a human project, we can’t help but succeed—that’s just a little joke. The only way to cheer myself, besides the bouillabaisse, which I recommend... Read more
Well, 2019. Happy New Year. I love parties and a good time, of course. That’s why I went to bed at 10:30 in order to desperately finish my 52nd book for the year after guilting my husband into cleaning the kitchen. He’s fine, I went shopping in the rain, in the dark (4:30 is as dark as night so), alone. Anyway, I’ve been thinking I need a word for this blog for 2019. Something like Elevate or Thrive or Flourish.... Read more
In lieu of a Podcast, which will doubtless be back next week, I thought I would meander around in a reminiscing way through 2018 and all the books I read. This was an interesting piece, by a person who reads more than 60 books a year, and this was wonderful, about how bookstores are making a come back. But what if you don’t get to have a commute, and you live with a lot of people who make it hard... Read more
In an over-sugared haze I finally read that muddled piece in the Guardian about how Christmas should be for everyone, not just Christians who are ‘celebrating’ the birth of Jesus. I was initially excited because I thought the author was going to indulge in the usual tinsel about how loving all your fellow creatures is totally possible and easy if you just keep Christmas in your heart all year long. And, admittedly, I’ve been watching a lot of Hallmark movies... Read more
Well, the last Friday of the year. Can you believe it? It is high time I rolled my corpulent self over and tried to think of an actual thing—what are those called? Words? Blog posts? Does anyone care any more? As an exercise in severe mental discipline I thought I would try to reconstruct the week for myself, just to see if I am an actual living being. One Christmas Eve, as you might remember, was Monday. And that meant... Read more
Merry Christmas to you all! I’m going to, most tragically, be offline the next two days. Gotta pull the pageant together and cook all the things. Hopefully Matt will agree to a 3rd or 4th or 5th day of Christmas podcasting interlude. In the meantime, may God give you nice things. Read more
Preventing Grace
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