The middle class is a tricky category to fall into. You are not poor enough to have the tight confines of an extremely restricted budget – spending to survive with anything more hardly being an option. You do not feel you are rich enough to be associated with the superficial, self-absorbed Real...

  Two weeks ago, I went on a fast for medical reasons. I had felt very sick for many weeks – constantly bloated, and whenever I felt hungry, I would eat one or two bites and then feel immediately full. I figured I’d fast until I felt better – just to clear my system of food. Over...

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted,...

Yesterday, while doing my normal business of driving to pick up kids from daycare, I heard about a campaign and petition launched by the wives of the British and German ambassadors to the UN. These women had created a video juxtaposing pictures of Asma al-Assad, the Syrian President’s wife, with...

Slightly over a year ago, I purchased a General Electrics microwave oven that has since fizzled out beyond hope of repair. Meanwhile, my 1914 Westinghouse Turnover Toaster lives on past its creators, browning my bread perfectly to this day. This was no accident, but corporate “genius” at work. Though...

The spiritual life I had spent many years trying to locate within the walls of churches and on my knees in earnest prayer, was primarily one of the other world—the beyond. The spirit that I have found is not located beyond, but in the soil right beneath my feet. The new life it calls me to does not...

“When art is not flourishing, religion languishes . . . the two often wax and wane in tandem.” Earle Jerome Coleman. There seems to me a mysterious metaphysical connection between aesthetics and religion, art and worship that I find myself hesitant to explore. Each subject on it’s own is daunting,...

The tension of living as a Christ follower seems to swing back and forth through history between the two extremes of separation and assimilation. The question of how to be “in the world and not of it” becomes a constant struggle for the Christian. Do we separate ourselves from the secular in pursuit...

Television ads for investment firms and insurance companies are scary. Accidents jump out of closets, poor planning slithers under our sheets, and retirement is clomping up the basement steps to get us. Explicit images of a youthful retiree surfing with his grandson at the beach house, graduation ceremonies...

Christmas. It’s a wonderful time, especially for children. It’s a time of family, of food and feasting and fun, a time of giving, and of receiving. A time of waiting patiently for Christmas night, of trying to sleep until your eyes hurt from keeping them shut and wondering what wonderful thing will...