We’re sixteen Republican debates into the election season. By November, we’ll have all whipped ourselves into a vitriolic froth and will have convinced ourselves that the very survival of the planet hinged on the result of the...

Nothing gets me believing there’s a hell more than when Christians talk about sex. Anyone who received the Talk from sweaty-palmed religious folk know that there is no tribulation more painful, unsettling, not to mention godless. If your conversation went beyond “Don’t do it,” it likely elevated...

There are plenty of criticisms offered against today’s American youth and young adults. And despite the fact that I turn forty in a few weeks, I still consider myself among them: a kindred spirit of cultural orphans, still sifting through the detritus of an evaporating American Dream to figure out...

I was talking to a woman at Church on Sunday who has been through more than her share of hard times. She wears her life in the lines on her face and along the scars and blemishes on her fragile hands. Through it all, she’s held on to her faith in God. But the relationship has, at times, been strained...

Skye Jethani’s book, The Divine Commodity, is on my list of top 20 books, so when I heard that he was coming out with another book,  I knew I had to read it. I ordered it as soon as it was available on Amazon and I read most of it last week while doing stand-in work on a movie set. You know...

Christopher Boucher’s debut novel, How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive, is styled partly in the form of a self-help book on taking care of one’s Volkswagen (obvious enough) and partly in the form of a memoir—a man’s personal experiences raising a Volkswagen. The narrator, known only as “___,”...

Then I took a good look at everything I’d done, looked at all the sweat and hard work. But when I looked, I saw nothing but smoke. Smoke and spitting into the wind. There was nothing to any of it. Nothing. (Ecclesiastes 2:11, The Message translation) Death by Borders On occasion, working at Borders...

Yesterday, Burnside writer James Williams published an essay on why September 11 is a day of beauty and celebration for his family. As our nation continues to recover from the psychological wound left by 9/11, we need thoughtful expressions of hope, like James’s essay. We also need clear-headed, honest...

Somewhere in March I stumbled upon a call for poetry “This is my Story” and knew that I needed to participate. I resonated with the need to share our stories and lessons learned along the journey of faith.  I assumed my submissions would fall by the wayside like most other efforts, but I was pleased...

A lot of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Good Squad is about people feeling empty. Not just a vague dissatisfaction with job or marriage, but real, legitimate spiritual emptiness. Nearly every one of her broad cast of characters struggles against it; the sense that time, the “goon” in the title,...