The most famous episode of The Brady Bunch is the one where Marcia takes a football to the nose.[1] In the beginning of the episode, she is asked out by the school’s star football player and breaks off a date with her friend Charley, a rather unremarkable suitor by comparison. In breaking off the date, […]
My Daddy Is Big and He Can Carry Me
This sweet reflection comes to us from Juliette Alvey. This picture was drawn by my daughter, Devyn, and the words she expressed are very literal. My husband is 6’4” and is strong enough to pick her up and carry her (or even swing her upside down). She says she loves him because of this, which […]
PZ's Podcast: Soul Searchin' Time, Blowing Away, Seasons in the Sun, and Soul Trajectory
EPISODE 266: Soul Searchin’ Time The previous cast, “Surprise, Surprise”, raised the vexing question of exceptions in the practice of grace to sinners and sufferers. I spoke about the chronic inability of Christians who emphasize grace to embody it in relation to specific sinners and specific sins. One example I chose was from the Reformed […]
Things We Cannot Say
There are things we cannot say. This is a fundamental truth about life. It is not a lesson we learn explicitly, but early in our childhoods we learn that some things are not to be spoken. Social pressure or the desire for social status cause us to keep our mouths shut. We learn that we […]
How Not To Raise a Daughter in Purity Culture (According to Sarah's Parents)
One night in high school, my very Baptist boyfriend and I had plans to attend Black Light Night with the Baptist youth group at the local bowling alley. If you are unfamiliar with this ritual of youth, it involved a dark bowling alley, the neon glow of black lights, and loads of N’Sync. We decided […]
From the Bottom of a Well
This reflection comes to us from Juliette Alvey. We are welcomed into God’s family kicking and screaming. How many baptisms have you witnessed where the baby or small child (not usually the adults, although you never know what’s going on on the inside) are doing just that—kicking and screaming. Why are all of these people […]
The Pity Party Is Canceled (At Least for Now)
I am really good—dangerously good—at throwing pity parties. I can wallow with the best of them. And the past couple weeks have been the party to end all parties, mostly because God just refuses to go along with my plans. I’m not getting my way, and life isn’t going exactly as I think it should, […]
What Is Love?
What is love? Love has no ego. Love and ego are antithetical. Diametrically opposed to one another. Foreign languages one to another. Ego equally has no love but is all pretense and self-preservation. This quote from Law and Gospel: A Theology for Sinners (and Saints) summarizes this well: We have a whole secondary self we put […]
The Peril of Good Things (from Milkman, Pt 2)
I tried to…unravel the distortions, have her right mind restored to her. She said it was impossible, that it was perilous to focus on good things when there were bad things, all these bad things, she said, that could not be forgot. She said old dark things as well as new dark things had to […]
Grace Knows the Back Story
Big Ellis, a young farmer in Wendell Berry’s short story, “Down in the Valley Where the Green Grass Grows,” literally struggles to keep his pants up, due to his awkwardly proportioned body. His social graces are a little off as well, and this complicates his romantic exploits in the town of Port William. He did […]
A Place Called Family
This morning’s post was written by Andreas Thiel. The session began as it usually does: a group of residents in a long-term care facility had gathered in the chapel, for the weekly one-hour session, “Coffee with the Chaplain.” The room was comfortably full (which doesn’t take much, given the numbers of walkers and wheelchairs in […]
