Everything is heightened in high school. Our emotions and hormones are in such a state of SOS that every decision, every milestone, and every word spoken to and about us are magnified as if by one of those giant telescopes that can make the rings of Saturn look like a delightful place to vacation. The […]
Read more "The Senior Class Song"On my flight back to America from Israel, a small brunette girl in a unicorn t-shirt put her plastic box of markers in the back pocket of the seat in front of her while she colored in her book. Though they weren’t actually markers, they were clear plastic pens in various hues of landscapes and […]
Read more "An American in Israel"I’ve loved the Olympics for as long as I can remember. Whether it’s the Summer Games or the Winter, it’s astonishing to see people level-up to superhero status while executing incredible feats of strength or endurance or artistry; things regular folks like me could never do. The first Olympics I remember was when I was […]
Read more "Like Mike"I watch more reality TV in the summer than at any other time of the year. I love Big Brother (it’s like chess but with people and emotions!), So You Think You Can Dance (Mary Murphy’s screams!), America’s Got Talent (real people doing amazing things!), and there’s usually at least one Housewives franchise I watch […]
Read more "The American Anti-christ"In seventh grade, I had an addiction. Many afternoons, I stayed after school to work on the yearbook and the newspaper. Our staff worked simultaneously on both and each month, our newspaper (a packet of regular paper stapled in the top left corner) was handed out in the hallways during lunch. We were each charged […]
Read more "My Strange Addiction"The chapter below is a part of a series I have been/am still working on in which I retell the Bible stories I loved in Sunday School and explore their applications to my adult life as well as to today’s fractured church and society. I find the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho […]
Read more "Joshua: An Enduring Culture of Violence"Not too long ago, I attended a funeral of a friend who was five years younger than me. After two and a half years of fighting the injuries he sustained in a car accident, he succumbed to them, leaving a church full of people dressed in black to eulogize his life. He was as jovial […]
Read more "The Church in Times Square"