Tag Archives: Faith
A Good Story Well Told: Thoughts for the Class of 2020
The tougher the season, the sweeter the celebration. Here’s what I said to my seniors at their baccalaureate ceremony.
More Ways to Wait
After months of prayer and seeking out an answer, months of trying to be patient and wait well, my answer arrived, and I began looking forward to a season of rest and celebration. I thought I knew what the future held, and more than anything, I thought this particular season of waiting was over. Funny how a global pandemic didn’t figure into my plans at all!
Ten Years Later
All this discussion of college essays made me think about what I had written my own college essay about…Thanks to my packrat tendencies, I was able to scrounge around and find an old binder labeled “High School Writing.” The very last essay in the binder was the essay I wrote for my application to Vanderbilt…
Loch Lomond and The Power of Place
One of the things I love about reading is that, often without meaning to, I find similar themes and ideas popping up in the texts I’m reading for pleasure and for work. Most recently this happened during my preparations for this year’s Spring Term trip to Scotland and my time planning and teaching the British […]
Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy
Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy is a new collection of short stories that all touch in some way upon the journeys of two brothers who are both named after demigods from the ancient text The Mahabharata. These stories, while spanning great distances in geography and time, all feel like parts of a larger work, a […]
London Calling (Again)
One of these days you guys are going to get tired of me writing travel posts about the UK. But even when that day does arrive, I won’t stop! I lived and studied in Oxford for a term when I was in college, and the rest is history. I visited again with my Mom in […]
A Way Other Than Our Own by Walter Brueggemann
And now, says the poet, there is another way. It is not your way. You would not have imagined this alternative way nor been able to predict it, and you surely cannot control it. There is a way into the future of your life, because God is at work doing strange, wondrous things for you […]
The Consolation of Doubt
Can I tell you a story? It involves a bit of jumping around in time and place, but I think it’s worth telling. Last month I read a book by Frederick Buechner called The Remarkable Ordinary. It wasn’t the first of his books I’ve read–a few years back I read his book Telling the Truth, and I […]
2017 Poem-a-Day Challenge: Week 2
Today I’m sharing my seven poems from Week 2 of the Writer’s Digest Poem-a-Day Challenge. I got a little behind, so some of these weren’t written on the actual day of the prompt, but they were all written this week. Thanks for reading them! 🙂 Day 6: Praise “Where the Wild Things Are” Glory be […]
Gilead and the Gift of Fiction
There is a song by Sara Groves called “Add to the Beauty” that I try to listen to at least once every morning–either while I’m getting ready to leave home or while I’m driving up I-75 to work. Over the years this song has become a daily reminder of some of the things I value […]
Book Fifty 