Religion

Nicolas Herman was an uneducated peasant in seventeenth century France, impressed into the military where he was assigned the most menial tasks. When he was released, he decided to enter a Carmelite monastery and there became Br. Lawrence of the

The first line of a book has always fascinated me. May not always be significant in content, but it establishes the author’s voice—manner, personality, mood—the nature of our link with the storyteller. Call me Ishmael…Moby Dick. It was the best

First apartment Marian and I rented  was near a nature reserve, and a colony of turkey vultures roosted in the tops of the eucalyptus all around us. Most people complained about the mess on the sidewalks, but I loved them.

On Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, we have been doing more immersive, "theater of the mind" type programs--like attending a live broadcast of an old radio program: voice actors reading scripts at microphones, music and sound effects filling out

Woke up out of a dream in which a couple agreed to adopt triplets, but as soon as the adoption was final, found out all three infants were blind. Doctors told of a procedure that could repair the optic nerves,

We’ve all heard of the patience of Job. Book of James called it to our attention in the West when King James translated it that way in 1611. But the word that James originally used primarily means endurance that is at

The older I get, the simpler things look. I used to love complexity. All the words, diagrams, contingencies, choices. Now I love that my wardrobe has come down to one basic uniform—black shirt, jeans, alternating pairs of shoes. And I love

Do you know how many creation stories there are in the bible? Two… Surprised? How many flood stories? Two. There are many “doublets” or repetitions of stories in the bible that scholars attribute to a near literary certainty that, apart from

A businessman watches a fisherman come in with a great catch. Asks how long it took to catch so much. Only a short while. Why not stay out longer and catch more? It’s enough to feed his family for the

William Shatner, Star Trek’s original Captain Kirk, flew to space on a private suborbital flight a year ago, and like many astronauts, had a profound, worldview-shattering experience. Space was “unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth—deep, enveloping, all-encompassing.