“We’re meeting in the office after the service, right?” This from an elder who caught up with me before church. Ah! Were we? I had lost the thread of an email exchange between our family and our church leadership, and—I’m not proud of it—completely forgotten that today was the day our youngest daughter had her…
Liona Caravatti’s family belongs to one of the highest ranks in the city of Venice. Her life is comfortable, filled with little delicacies, affectionate siblings, and splendor. The one note in it that sounds off is her relationship to her father, which, though she doesn’t understand why, is different than his relationship with her siblings….
Our theology influences every part of our lives, and yet so many theology resources are fairly abstract—they’re hard to decipher, and tough for kids to decode. We adults can leap a little more nimbly from one abstract concept to another, so applying theology—what we believe about God—to a dicey situation at work may come more…
It rained for days. Not the drizzly, misty rain we’re known for in the Pacific Northwest, but fat, cold, splashy drops that fell and fell and fell. We could hear them, hammering the roof. We could see them, coursing down the windows. We watched the backyard spring puddles like leaks in places there had never…
That first week of September, I dropped all four of my children off at school and drove home in an empty minivan. Ordinarily, an empty minivan is a treat: a chance to put on a podcast or some music I want to listen to, or to stop for coffee and not share with anyone. But…
We live in a world blighted by sin. This past year, we’ve seen startling markers of it: the day I first drove downtown last spring and saw the shops closed and the streets empty, I felt it. This is not how it was meant to be. But even on a day like that, when everything felt marred…
Teaching kids to pray can be tricky. When we talk to other people, we take in all kinds of cues, from their posture to their facial expression to what they do with their hands. They interact with us as we speak, even if they respond only with a distracted “Mmm-hmm.” But the act of prayer…
When I was in high school, I was hungry: I wanted a substantial meal. I wanted something true and lasting, and I looked for it everywhere. But all the books I read told me that this was it—the world around me, with its petty conflicts and scalding pain, was all there was. These books told me…
Last month we had to put a beloved cat to sleep. Her name was Captain Jack Sparrow, and she was one of two littermates my husband and I adopted early in our marriage when we decided, on a whim, to stop by the pet store just to “look at the kittens.” Sparrow was a gray…
When my eldest daughter was a toddler, she discovered James Herriot’s Moses the Kitten. She dropped that book in my lap again and again, and we read it until the book spine felt limber and the pages soft. It is a long book—not ideal for a hasty pre-nap read—but I loved the descriptive passages, we both…
When our first child was a baby, I did not have to look hard to find parenting advice. Strangers offered it unsolicited; moms at church were eager to share their hard-won wisdom. And the books were everywhere: whether I was learning how to introduce my daughter to solids or troubleshooting potty training, I never struggled…
While in the middle of the vigil required of all incoming knights, Tiuri hears a voice outside the church. He is forbidden to speak or to leave the church during the vigil, but the voice cries for help. What should a knight-to-be do: obey his king and remain seated, meditating upon his impending knighthood, or…
