I was born in 1948, but it took me a while to understand the world into which I was, that year, so healthily delivered, or

I envy monastics–sometimes. I envy their intent to zero in on the Christian faith, to delete every iota of worldly pain and pleasure from hearts

  Our lindens are just about the tallest trees in town, I swear.  And there he was, high up top, singing his heart out, that

“. . .to the great God, nothing is little. . .” You know?–I really ought to imprint that line on a t-shirt: “to the great

  Last summer, we’d just passed the bridge at Nijmegen where, 600 yards to the west, hundreds of GIs paddled flimsy Brit boats with their

  “The 150 evangelical leaders who met behind closed doors on January 14 to anoint a Republican candidate for President were wise not to have

The hardest work I ever did was a three-week stint–that’s all–with a road crew cutting sod and laying it down along the new interstate highway,

Case closed.  I’m an Iowan, once upon a time a Republican, and I am at this moment endorsing a candidate.  (Now please stop calling.)  I’d

A half a century ago, I was a kid in a Sunday school class taught by a man who’d taught those classes longer, maybe, than