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Adoption: Two Voices

How are your churches, schools, and other religious institutions preparing themselves to deal with adoptees and foster children? When deeply traumatized children walk through your doors and push your boundaries of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, are you going to receive them with compassion, grace, and understanding?
October 31, 2022
Featured

Disaster at the Pine Car Derby

Pine cars, like Little League trophies, find their way from shelves and fireplace mantels to boxes in the garage, and sometimes reside in the heart. If, as some have said, character is who we are in the dark, the shadows of Sam’s bedroom revealed the genuineness of one boy’s heart, and the workings of the Lord in a different kind of race. 
October 24, 2022
EssayFeatured

A Sacramental Moment in Hebrew Class

I was deeply moved by this simple gesture. The students and Amanda thought nothing of it. They did it naturally, instinctively. I realized that we were learning much more than the meaning of the Hebrew verbs, a’lu and ridu; we were learning to be attentive to one another and to share in each other’s learning. It was a sacramental moment, a foreshadowing of the community that Jesus has called us to be, a community in which the barriers dividing people…
October 17, 2022
EducationFeatured

The Most Conservative People on Campus

Yet: voter suppression, race-based discrimination and violence, politically motivated censorship in the schools, and gratuitous red-baiting remain depressingly familiar features of our present-day situation—but arguably worse, now aggravated by segmented cable TV and social media, mainstreamed by elected officials, and fortified by the proliferation of self-styled paramilitary groups itching for civil war; and getting worse, in part because the current trend of eliminating the arts, closing down the languages, gutting the humanities departments, and reducing the liberal arts requirements in…
October 3, 2022
EssayFeatured

God is in Control (?)

If God is totally in control, then the child-like part of my heart can sit back and relax. God’s got this, after all. I don’t have to be responsible, I don’t have to face consequences, and I can avoid the painful feelings of grief and sadness.
September 26, 2022
Featured

Our Last Week at Loonsong Cabin

For twenty-two years, Loonsong has been an emotional and spiritual refuge for me. It is a healing and renewing place where I unwind, read, write, play games, explore, sit and stare. I am more present to myself and to Tom when I step away from responsibilities and stressors into the quiet, the beauty, the remoteness, and enter this time without expectations. Tomorrow, we leave. I wonder: how will I carry the gifts of Loonsong into my future
September 5, 2022
Featured

Jake’s Engagement

Jake first noticed her the day after she moved in to the home. She bore a remarkable resemblance to his first and only wife—the white hair, the infectious smile, the pleasant round face and other round parts--so much so that it almost frightened him. He became a widower about six months before Julia entered his now smaller world, quietly yet abruptly, and his life would not be the same.
August 29, 2022