A nonbelieving friend recently attended a Catholic service for the first time since childhood and described herself as “enthralled with the long-forgotten but completely remembered beauty of the Mass.” She spoke of the gold vestments, candles, incense and back-and-forth singing, contrasting it with Protestant services she had experienced, which she perceived as “a cold, lifeless box.” […]
To worship in spirit and truth Read More »
As a preteen, I picked up a pen pal from Ghana. She told me how she was trying to save money for college. “We don’t go to college unless we have a purpose for it,” I remember writing back. We being conservative Mennonites and purpose being a vital occupation like a doctor or a nurse.
One of the people I most admire–a writing mentor about the age of my parents–recently lost her strong young-man son. My heart goes out to her. Life is so full of surprises. Not all of them are bad. But some of them are very hard indeed. “Hold your life with an open hand,” a beautiful
The Joy that Holds the Universe Together Read More »
Not long after I met Kelsey Osgood, we sat at a picnic table at the country ice cream store just down the road, she with her individual-sized bag of chips (chosen because of her Orthodox Jewish food requirements), I with my non-kosher cone. We discussed—among other things—Jewish food laws that seemed so stringent as to
Godstruck: A Response Read More »
For over a month now, I’ve been writing down snippets of things I want to tell you, so this update will be random and long and interspersed with pictures of life here on the farm (that we no longer farm much, since Ivan is into storage buildings and we rent most of our farmland out).
Heartstones, slugs, and snippets of things Read More »
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