“Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims.” — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “A World Split Apart” Harvard, June 1978 My wife Meg spent many years of her life teaching children to love...
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“He takes her pain into his hands.” Wanting to pay attention—in that deepest way that Simone Weil calls us to —I have been reading a novel by Eugene Vodolazkin, set in 15th-century Russia, always an ambitious empire, too often an arrogant empire. While born in Kiev (contemporary Ukraine), Vodolazkin lives in St. Petersburg (contemporary Russia);...
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In 2019 my wife and I worked with a team to start a new church in East Harlem. “I work on Wall Street. Will this church plant be a place where my non-believing finance co-workers feel welcome?” asked an attendee at one of our church plant vision nights. “Yes,” I responded. “We certainly want to...
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“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.” These words have been running through my mind the last weeks, thinking through ideas about metanarrative and narrative, about what we believe to be the Great Story of All of Life, and our own smaller stories. I have been reading Friedrich...
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Growing up, my folks instilled in me a respect for Sunday, the Lord’s day; though not as extreme as some of my friends at church. Our morning usually consisted of Sunday school, church, and then the same fried chicken and fried okra at the same restaurant, washed down by sweet tea and Ms. Missy’s pie....
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