Human effort, “elbow grease”, isn’t enough to save our souls.   However, human effort can produce wisdom for a person or a community or a country.  But it’s a certain kind of human effort.  It is the effort to push the ego out of the way, to strive for...

Trading her nest
of taffeta and tulle,
laying her buzzed and peach-fuzzed head
on crisp linen
hospital corners.

And pinned to a gurney by a tangle of tubes
carrying a slowly dripping chemo cocktail,
pried open by a surgeon's scalpel,
as it probes for cancer
in her fragile frame.  

She rises, a...

 “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on."         
                                        From...

When I was a youngster, I twisted my ankle often.  We spent hours running in the open backyards of our suburban neighborhood, and uneven grass could trip me up.  After years of these occurrences, my ankle developed a weakness.  I can twist my ankle walking on an uneven sidewalk...

“Death…is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon:  it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered.”  C.S. Lewis

There has been a lot of death around us this...

Our son Court came running up to us at the church coffee hour.  “Mom! Dad! Can I have some money to go to Taco Bell with the other kids?” 

Every Sunday after church a gang of teens and tweens from the youth group would gather and head out on the five-block walk to the local...

In 1981 we were sharing a house with a single friend when our daughter was born.  Patrick was an invaluable extra pair of hands and emotional support as Dave and I began to adjust to life as new parents.  I grew to think that a ratio of three adults to every one child was pretty ideal.

A few months ago a young woman who has started a successful online business asked my husband and myself for advice about how to tell the story of its development and its advantages over other programs.  The crux of her inquiry was the question, “Who should be the hero of this...

On the threshold of your throne room
where the hills meet the plain,
there, enveloped in the safety
of your stronghold once again

where the stones sing your praises,
and the grasses wave and sway,
wrapped cocoon-like in a vault
in the heat of the day 

with clamped hands on our mouths
in the...

Seven, twelve and seven
  leftovers, broken pieces,
    tumbled on the ground
      enough, more than enough

crumbs off the loaf
  built into sanctuary
    stone upon stone
      enough, more than enough

 standing on the threshold
 ...