One year ago in February I was so sick that for two weeks I could do little more than sleep. For most of that time I lay on the couch with a fever that topped 103 degrees, coughing so violently that I lost my ability to talk. Anything I managed to eat tasted like sulfur. […]

Years ago, the leader of a parent’s support group I was in led a guided meditation. “Close your eyes,” she encouraged us. I closed my eyes. “Now imagine whatever it is that you desire coming to you,” she said, or some such thing. “Receive it from the universe.” I opened my eyes. The universe? Embarrassed, […]

When you are just that tired. When all you want is to curl up with a book by the fire and wait for all of the other fires in the world to go out. When day turns into night, which turns into day and the dishes demand to be put away, the laundry washed, the […]

In a year rife with moral failures by Christian leaders, I read with grim curiosity last week’s New York Times article describing the firing of Carl Lentz, the celebrity pastor of Hillsong’s East Coast church, who recently acknowledged that he’d had an affair. However, the affair was the least of what surprised me. That Lentz […]

Listening to Maine Public Radio this week, I heard a report that one-third of us are carrying so much pandemic-related stress that we are tossing and turning in our beds at night, unable to sleep. While sleep comes easily to me, I too feel the weight of worry caused by the COVID-19 crisis. Exercising, eating […]

“You’re wearing two watches,” a student commented last week, noticing the brown leather bands wrapped securely around my wrist. “Actually, only one’s a watch,” I said, holding up my arm. “The other’s just a bracelet.” An author friend, Lucinda Secrest McDowell, had given it to me a couple of years ago in celebration of her […]

Nothing in my lifetime has divided American Christians like the upcoming presidential election. I’ve been getting unsolicited emails from respected Christian leaders on why it is imperative that I vote for a Democrat. On social media and in print, other equally respected Christian leaders contend that I’ll be sinning if I don’t vote for a […]

As a young person, I read the Bible because I was required to. Certain passages thrilled me, like the Apostle Paul’s treatise on love, King David’s Shepherd Psalm, and especially the King James Version of a verse in Job confirming the existence of unicorns. Unicorns! Then my mother explained that later translators understood the animal […]