Our Christmas shopping, baking, entertaining and giving lists are shorter this year out of economic necessity. We’re still going to trim the tree—my project this week—but I’m also trimming some of my other “traditional” activities, like printing...

Twenty-five years ago I took a field trip with my elementary school class to a children’s museum. At the end of the tour up a stairway lined with rowdy children, was a narrow, dark touch tunnel that would lead us to the exit. I knelt down for my turn...

Each year about this time, we order a cord of firewood to burn in our wood burning stove, and we spend a Saturday working as a family to haul and stack it for the winter. Paul gave that same energy to a wood cutting project for another family last...

I stayed awake most of the night after the season premiere of a favorite (ok. . . the only) television show I watch. I knew I just couldn’t watch it anymore. The sexual content had increased THAT much. But it wasn’t until I asked my seminary students...

October brought a mess of opportunity leading into a November with promise. What’s a mess of opportunity? A mess of opportunity is the appearance of uncomfortable or unfortunate circumstances that motivate a change for the better. The architecture...