Sketches inspired by Locust Floral arrangements.

I’ve been thinking about the aloneness I’ve experienced this month being in isolation for the whole month of December, a month that is usually full of gathering and parties and general merriment. I have suffered from many tortured, nonsensical thoughts of what I did to deserve this, and then followed closely on its heels is a question of “maybe I might prefer this... maybe I should put my heart…

Best read while listing to The Man Comes Around.

I told some people this week that my wife was pretty sick and in no time our community was bringing us meals and offered to do literally everything that we would possibly need to leave the house for. We're getting care packages left on our doorstep every day. We are so moved by the generosity and love shown to us.

We found out yesterday that Liv has…

“I just been wondering lately why things happen the way they do.”
“Oh!” he said, then I’m glad you have some time to spare. I’ve been wondering about that more or less my whole life.

I’ve been rereading, for the third or fourth time, one of my favorite novels, “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson. I first heard of Gilead from my friend Kevin who is an avid reader, thinker, and writer himself; and, in…

Sitting by a fire might be the very thing that gets me through a pandemic winter. I suppose there's something therapeutic in it that I really can't help, something built into my very psyche that draws me to sit by a fire, for the warmth, yes, and for the mesmerizing quality of the flames. It seems that this would be the ideal time of life to discover all the therapeutic activities one could find…

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and she said “who of us doesn’t feel like we need medication this year?!” Maybe just something cute, like a sedative, to knock me out til Christmas Day? Of course, I’m kidding. Right? I mean, I think so. 2020 has been a b***h. I don’t usually cuss, but that’s what 2020 has done to me. You may or may not have had a similar experience.

Sometime around…

I hope that they feel deeply connected to nature; that they belong on this earth, they belong in this family, they belong in their body. I hope they feel safe to explore all the tiny, loud, scary, fragile bits of their insides that God created. I hope they know that they matter, truly; their thoughts matter, their feelings matter, and so do those of the person next to them, and the person on the…

Don’t vote Trump for religious liberty

Tish Harrison Warren:

The root of religious freedom amid pluralism is love for our neighbors, especially our ideological or political enemies. We cannot spend eight years supporting a president whose basic modus operandi is meanness and cruelty-- who vocally disagrees with the call to love one’s enemy--and then expect anyone to take us seriously when we ask them to respect our religious freedom.

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I'm catching up this week after a tussle with some poison ivy. Nature's ever-ready reminder that it is more than we.

Evangelicals Made a Bad Bargain With Trump

Really enjoying the Atlantic lately. Peter Wehner:

The conservative evangelical David French has reminded us that in 1998, during the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a “Resolution on Moral…

Why I’m pro-life but not pro-Trump

Retired doctor and author Lodovico Balducci:

I grew up in a small town in Italy where abortion was illegal and could bring criminal charges. Yet in my hometown, everyone knew where to go for an abortion. There was a provider for poor women and a provider for the well-to-do. Most of the time, authorities in this mostly Catholic country left both alone.

[...]

I’m…