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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...

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...

July 2024

July 26, 2024

A Young Woman Confronts Her Inherent Racism

It's been a crazy week, hasn't it? I have deliberately avoided going political on this...

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 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....

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 15, 2022

How to Get Along with People Who Aren’t Like You

As I begin to prepare for my next book project, a memoir on the teaching...

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 07, 2022

What Does the Bible Say about _____________?

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

July 2022

July 07, 2022

Descending and Ascending the Mountain of the Lord

Facebook reminded me that eight years ago I was on retreat at the New Camoldoli...

May 2022

May 11, 2022

God is Not a Vending Machine

My most recent blog post included some reflections from a recent student on what she...

March 2022

March 09, 2022

Confessions of a Tree Hugger

For the twenty-five-plus years that Jeanne and I have lived in our house, the lot...

February 2022

February 05, 2022

Dear Persons of Faith: Stop Trying to Prove that God Exists

In Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead, Reverend John Ames (one of my top...

January 2022

January 27, 2022

Raised on Original Sin

It hardly seems possible that I am now in the tenth calendar year of writing...

October 2021

October 24, 2021

“The Heart Has its Reasons . . .”: Why I am Not an Atheist

In my ethics classes, we are currently in the middle of a unit called "Does...

June 2021

June 24, 2021

A Modest Proposal: Should My Time Be For Sale?

My next book project is a memoir about the teaching life. I started gathering materials...

November 2020

November 17, 2020

The Ancient Stoics in Zoom Land

I was asked a few days ago by someone in our Marketing and Communications area...

August 2020

August 30, 2020

So You Want to be a Blogger? Here are some things I’ve learned over the past nine years.

Nine years ago today, I started this blog. The last three and a half of...

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