Category: Christian Life
My AI Spiritual Director
After years working as a doctor in a hospital, a friend shared the most frustrating part of her job: patients whose online, amateur medical research weighs more heavily in their decision making than her professional opinion. She ended with a...
Dante Was Right: Suffering and Our Journey Toward God
“Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself/ In a dark wood, the right road lost.” These are the famous opening lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy and, even if you hate what follows, their brevity and archetypal power are hard...
Pursue Obscurity
Craig Bartholomew, who has been a friend and mentor to many of us younger Christian scholars, often repeats the admonition: “pursue obscurity.” It is not enough simply to accept obscurity, if it happens to be our lot. Rather, there is...
Kites
I taught my sons to fly a kite the other day. It was a beautiful Sunday morning and the wind was just right for it. They are old enough to know how a kite should fly but not old enough...
Can I Get a Witness?: A Response to Tim Keller
In his recent essay, Tim Keller has entered his bit in a persistent dialogue regarding how Christians should speak in public. The players in this dialogue, including James Wood, Aaron Renn, and Simon Kennedy, are working to sort out how...
Mocking Death
A few weeks ago, my two-year-old daughter and I were out enjoying one of the first crisp afternoons of autumn with a walk around our neighborhood. We turned a corner, and suddenly she stopped and pointed to a house down...
The Great Unmooring
Richard Sennett. The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New York: WW Norton, 2000. 176pp, $15.99. Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel. Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from...
The Discipleship of Work
When we moved to our farm several years ago with a toddler and newborn in tow, we mainly had it in mind to experience a bit of the country life: to plant a large garden and perhaps raise a few...
The Cross in Our Calling: A Reflection on Mary’s Magnificat
Mary is chosen for the sacred work of bearing the Incarnate Son of God, and the unforgettable words we know as The Magnificat come tumbling out: And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God...
What Can Contemporary Christians Learn from the Desert Fathers and Mothers?
I am a working pastor. That means that I have joined the company of those for whom the care of souls is the sum and substance of the job description. It is our life’s preoccupation, our central work.