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April 2026

April 22, 2026

This Blog Will Be A-Changin . . .

Thirteen-and-a-half years after starting this blog, I find myself thinking and praying about its future...

November 2025

November 06, 2025

Lift Up Your Hearts

At my book launch on campus last week, when responding to a question during Q...

June 2025

June 15, 2025

How to be Good

I'm re-working a full draft of my next book project--Nice Work If You Can Get...

June 03, 2025

The Terrain of the Sacred

In her spiritual memoir Still, Lauren Winner tells the story of a conversation between poet...

September 2024

September 10, 2024

Remembering Frieda–a dog who was a person

Facebook reminded me that we lost our beloved dachshund Frieda six years ago yesterday. She...

April 2024

April 11, 2024

Writing and Living Bird by Bird

The list of authors whose work has been most influential on my spiritual growth over...

March 2024

March 17, 2024

Saint Patrick? Let Me Introduce you to Saint Bridget!

Today is St. Patrick's Day, not my favorite holiday (as you'll see below). Portions of...

March 12, 2024

Introduction to “For Everything There is a Season” . . .

Yesterday I had a very encouraging conversation with an editor from a publishing company who...

January 2024

January 21, 2024

Is Your Life Going According to Plan?

When I first started this blog a bit over eleven years ago, I told Jeanne...

January 14, 2024

How Solitude Can Lead to God

The building looked like the love child of a logic problem and a crossword puzzle....

January 09, 2024

This I Believe–and that’s not a good thing

A number of years ago, at the end of a presentation to fellow resident scholars...

November 2023

November 19, 2023

Teach Us to Count Our Days

In an interesting confluence, today's lectionary Psalm--Psalm 90--plays an important role in the final section...

September 2023

September 28, 2023

What Would Dorothea Do?

I saw a bumper sticker once that said “So many books, so little time.” I...

September 06, 2023

What Does the Bible Say About . . . ?

In an interview with CNN a few years ago, Barbara Brown Taylor said something that...

August 2023

August 15, 2023

What College is Good For

I began gathering materials for my main sabbatical book project five years ago. Thanks to...

August 10, 2023

If No One Reads Me, Have I Wasted My Time?

Women are not wrong at all when they reject the rules of life that have...

July 2023

July 18, 2023

Do I Teach or Am I a Teacher? On Being a Verb Rather than a Noun

I have two book projects in the works these days. I just finished a full...

July 16, 2023

Limitations, Shortcomings, and Contentment

For the past many years, my upper-division (juniors and seniors) classes have included an ongoing...

July 13, 2023

Why Is God So Wasteful?

As of next month, I will have been blogging for eleven years. As I suspect...

May 2023

May 31, 2023

A Blessing for my Final Sabbatical

The last three weeks, although a bit windy, have been beautiful bike riding weather here...

April 2023

April 20, 2023

So What? Now What?

Regular readers of this blog, or even those who just occasionally drop in, know that...

February 2023

February 02, 2023

Being and Discovering a Sacred Space

In his biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Walter Isaacson tells us that one of the...

December 2022

December 22, 2022

Returning Straight to Jesus at Christmas

This has been an unusual Advent season. Advent is my favorite season in the liturgical...

December 20, 2022

Not Exactly What I Had Planned

If you have been a regular reader of this blog for a while (there are...

November 2022

November 19, 2022

Living Life Forwards and Understanding it Backwards

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. Soren Kierkegaard One...

November 15, 2022

“Dear White America”: A Young Woman Reflects on her Inherent Racism

Yesterday was the final class in the “Race” unit in my General Ethics class; the...

November 12, 2022

“The Heart Has Its Reasons . . .”: My Evidence Against Atheism

Although I estimate that at least 80-90 percent of the negative comments and pushback I...

September 2022

September 22, 2022

Autumn Peace is a Choice

Today is the first day of autumn. For those who love autumn as I do,...

September 20, 2022

Some Stories are Not Redemptive. But They All are Important

The first reading assignment in my General Ethics class this semester was Kate Jennings’ 2002...

September 15, 2022

This Book Changed My Life: Kathleen Norris’ “The Cloister Walk”

I asked my Facebook friends at the beginning of the summer to list three or...

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