Frittering: A Christian Crafting Life
One of my favorite picture books is Ox Cart Man by Don Hall (illustrated by Barbara Cooney). It depicts the seasonal, artisan productivity of a New England settler family as they work throughout the year to grow, harvest, and create the items they will then drive to town and sell in order to do an even better job at growing, harvesting and creating the following year. The father works all winter splitting shingles and carving a new...
Mandelbrot, Mystery, and Mathematics
Once, my husband bought some discounted tickets to a concert of a famed blues/pop/rock guitarist; I was happy to make an evening of it, since I enjoy dates, live music, and discounts. After waiting over two hours for the star to take the stage and witnessing the crowd of thousands that still happily welcomed him by singing along word-perfect with every song, I realized I had dropped in as an outsider. I was a new fan, and I had much...
Winter and Spring: Seasons of the Christian Life
March is the time for climbing out of winter. After snow, ice, freezing rain, and endless clouds, a sunny day at fifty degrees feels positively balmy. The forsythia is blooming. The daffodils have “curtsied up and down.”[1] It has been a long walk through the wilderness, and Easter is on the horizon. In the best years, the inner self begins to bloom again as well. Modern psychological man assumes he merely projects his own hopefulness...
Teaching Bible Stories without Moralizing
One morning I read the Parable of the Mustard Seed to my four-year-old. He knows something about seeds and plants already, since he has watched the sunflower seeds he planted grow mammoth and yellow all summer. But, to ensure he has some context, I explain that a mustard seed is also very small—smaller even than a sunflower seed—yet grows into a large plant. I read the story. He sits in silence. Then his eyes widen in wonder as he...
Stewarding Fertility
Recently my husband and I, no longer able to stifle our curiosity, sat down to watch the Amazon Prime documentary, Shiny Happy People. While I will not weigh in here on the actual merits of the documentary, it highlights, through its depiction of the Dugger family, a movement found in some conservative Christian circles referred to as “Quiverfull.” The term is taken from Psalm 127:3–5, “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord:...
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