Essay

It was one of those beautiful August summer nights in Iowa when the locust are loud and the air is sweet with the smell of corn. The deck was thick with smoke—cigarettes and cigars, the conduit for good conversation. We talked about marriage and parenting, how it opens…

There we were, driving down a driveway made up of two deep ruts, moving deeper and deeper into the Arizona forest. At 7,500 feet, we drove along a ridge, weaving in and out of different pathways. Finally, we came to a clearing with a number of small buildings and children…

For the first time in a long time I'm playing rec league softball. It's a minor miracle, really. Two years ago I blew out my patellar tendon dunking a basketball, and now I'm running the bases. I don't run hard, but I'm running nonetheless. The…

A few weeks ago Michael Gerson, columnist for the Washington Post, made the following comment regarding the transgender issue and bathroom use on the PBS News Hour: This is the kind of issue that is normally handled with culture norms, and people making compromises, and, you…

Two weeks ago a friend and I took a bike trip. I bought a book—Road Biking Minnesota—so we drove up to Willmar, Minnesota, the place where I was born and lived until the 6th grade. I've been back many times but this time felt different. We stopped…

I'm wondering—What did colleges, churches, and ministry organizations do before all the new leadership literature that has clarified goals, objectives, and processes? Thankfully, we have been blessed with new forms of leadership that clarify the essential issues: This new paradigm shines a badly needed light on the inefficient processes of…

https://youtu.be/Z0GFRcFm-aY The longevity of REM's song “The End of the World as we Know it” speaks to it's symbolic creativity. It pops up in the strangest places—from movies like Chicken Little, to political speeches decrying the cultural shifts that have transformed the idyllic peace and harmony of mid twentieth century…