Leave Him Alone
I took my son to the skate park, three boys started in on him, and I yelled at them louder than I've yelled at anyone in a long time. I still can't decide whether I did right.
Archive
Journal
A private made public. Notes from ordinary days.
What About This Man?
I've been comparing myself to people lately. Not competing, just looking. But I've been less happy, and I can't tell whether the looking is the cause or my way of trying to climb back out.
Not This Sunday
It was a communion Sunday at my own church, and for the first time I didn't take it, because I've been far from God for a while now and it felt wrong to pretend otherwise.
Greater Strictness
A plain question after Bible study, and a verse that's had me wondering, some nights, whether teaching was ever mine to take up.
The Kid Who Came Back
A kid I hadn't seen in a year came back to church readier to listen, and it got me wondering whether noise is the real thing standing between us and God.
Who Gave You the Bible?
Working out a real answer to the question a Catholic friend keeps almost asking me, and landing somewhere sturdier than the fast answer I started with.
A Requiem Mass
On sitting through a Catholic funeral, loving what was beautiful in it, and staying exactly as settled a Protestant as I walked in.
Hiding in the Garden Again
On falling into old sin again, and the strange logic of shame that makes it hardest to pray exactly when prayer is most needed.
Pearls before the uninterested
Teaching teens about faith, losing them halfway through, and sitting with a verse I did not expect to feel so personally.
Two missionaries
Two LDS elders came to the door. I invited them into the garage. We talked for two hours about what happens after you die.
A Saturday in February
Cold light. Black coffee. Notes from a day at home with books and the question of whether I am doing enough.
On Finishing a Book
The particular grief of finishing something good, and why I've started keeping a log of last lines.