I’ve made a habit lately of studying the Amish. I use the word “study” loosely as this is not a simple curiosity of mine or some kind of theological experiment. My exploration flows out of a deep respect and admiration for their faith and spirituality.
We English (that’s what the Amish call us outside their communities) recognize them because of their familiar beards, horse-drawn buggies, fine woodworking, or barn-raisings, but there’s a lot more to this group than sturdy furniture and firm dispositions. They have a lively, vibrant faith despite their …

There’s a proverb that says if you love something, let it go. If it returns, it’s yours. If not, well, it never belonged to you in the first place. But had my son Braden written that proverb it would go more like this: “If you love something and it won’t cooperate, stomp the guts out of it.”
A few years ago he and I rescued a frog in our garage. I gently placed the little guy in Braden’s hands. We talked about the frog’s warts, his strong legs, and bulging eyes. …

I was in the hardware store when I first heard the news, though I did not know what I was hearing. As the cashier tallied my purchase, I overheard a reporter on the store’s radio make the peculiar announcement that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. At the time, I thought of it as little more than a curiosity. How wrong I was.
It’s been ten years since that September morning, and still I can recall the horror and heroics of that day. The pancaking towers, the daring …

I was told some decades ago that my life would pass like the seasons of the year. With life-expectancy hovering at roughly around eighty years, my wise counselor said that we can divide our lives into four seasons of twenty years each.
The first twenty years of life is spring. Life is new and young. Flowers bloom and the grass is green. Everything is just beginning – childhood, adolescence, young adulthood. In the spring we begin to plant the seeds that in time will grow, bloom, and eventually be harvested. The …

“Here I stand! I can do no other,” Martin Luther reportedly said as he stood before the papal commission that was investigating his radical beliefs. Taking a “stand” has been the Protestant rage ever since. We children of the Reformation, and I include myself in that family, just love to tell others what we believe.
When such telling begins, it doesn’t take long for words like doctrine, creed, tradition, and orthodoxy to get thrown around. Or, we use the opposite of these: Error, heresy, and sacrilege. We take our “stand” with …

Sometimes I just have to clap at the end of a film in a movie theater. I did that one recent Saturday at the end of the showing of  ”The Help,” and it started a modest clapping by others at a Harkins theater in Chandler. You just have to clap when insidious human practices are so wonderfully exposed.  Blatant racism of the Old South is showcased.
“The Help,” which has finished three weeks in a row at the top of  film ticket receipts, demonstrates why movies are made, why they need to be …

As I sit down at my keyboard to pound out this week’s column, there is a moving truck parked in my driveway. Most of my family’s earthly belongings are already loaded, and we are down to computers, televisions, and mattresses on the floor.
My kids love it. They say it is like camping, though I’ve never camped with so good a Wi-Fi signal (and I have never written a column while sitting “criss-cross-apple-sauce” in the kitchen floor, all chairs, tables, and desks now placed on the truck).
Our move is a migration …