The pandemic was hard. In California, we were in a lockdown. We were essentially constrained to home and short trips to necessary stores. The pandemic was hard on schools; as a headmaster, I was in the role of leading a school, teaching classes, and coordinating my own children’s Zooms and related distance learning. The pandemic […]
Of Kingbirds and Wonder
I park my car and enter the familiarity of Sycamore Grove. My tangled thoughts are equally familiar. “This is why I need this walk,” I tell myself, “to sort out the tangles.” I put my earbuds in. Chris Renzema’s voice helps contain my thoughts. This day began with a quick chat with my cousin in […]
Parenting Pigeons
Pincushion, porcupine, paleolithic—a procession of alliteratives suggested themselves to my writer’s brain as I goggled at the two-week-old squabs. My first four starter pigeons had arrived by airmail nearly three years prior; these were my first hatchlings. Between me and the pigeons it was clear that one or more of us had been confused about […]
On Christians Reading Fiction: Believing is Seeing
Last fall I dropped by the church office to drop something off. After a few minutes of chatting with the staff, I picked up my keys to go home. One of our interns then asked me the question, “what would you say to someone who thinks it’s not valuable spiritually to read fiction?” I put […]
Paying Attention
We’ve been taking walks through our woods, my family and I. To my inner Southern child, these Pacific Northwestern woods still seem a place of great magic and mystery. Douglas firs, planted in neat rows intended as Christmas trees many years ago, now overgrown and towering over dark, mushroomy and ferny expanses where the sun […]