2010
A few months into our life with a child with Down syndrome, I realized that we live in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right resources. We are within an hour of the best children's hospital in the nation, a hospital that has a satellite office ...
I was recently asked to write, in 100 words or less, an answer to the question: "How is the Holy Spirit at work in the world today?" Tough assignment, but here's what I came up with:
In nudges and whispers.
Like a seed growing, imperceptible at first. Like wind, invisible, refreshing, ...
"We live in a culture that has replaced soul with self. This reduction turns people into either problems or consumers. Insofar as we acquiesce in that replacement, we gradually but surely regress in our identity, for we end up thinking of ourselves and dealing with others in ...
Peter and I have been worried lately because Penny seems to care too much about how her actions impact our feelings. For instance, she had an accident while sitting on Peter's shoulders. So the collar of his shirt got wet. I took her home to change. She wouldn't look me in the ...
"Happy, Mom?"I've decided to start another weekly Friday feature, which will simply be a list of articles I've read in the past week that seem relevant and interesting to the topics I otherwise discuss on this blog. I won't comment at length here, but I will provide a sentence or two so ...
Michael Sandel's The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in an the Age of Genetic Engineering is thoughtful, well-written, and, despite Sandel's academic credentials, accessible to any reader. It is also very short (128 very small pages), and thus it is a great place to start if ...
"Don't grab!"
We hear those words a lot. It might be Peter or me admonishing one of our children. Or, just as likely, Penny reprimanding her brother. Despite the frequency of the command, grabbing is a part of the daily routine. Penny grabs a toy from William. William grabs my ...
I have a new post at her.meneutics about the spiritual significance of Williams Syndrome. It is called "The Anti-Racist, Anti-Fear Gene." Incidentally, the title is somewhat misleading as Williams Syndrome involves the absence of certain genes, but that's somewhat beside the ...
I have a new post at BLOOM: Parenting Children with Disabilities.
I'm printing it here in full, although I also encourage you to click over to BLOOM when you're done reading and scroll through the content there. Anyway, here's the post, which should make sense of the photo, ...
A short reflection the day after Mother's Day:
"The ethic of giftedness, under siege in sports, persists in the practice of parenting. But here, too, bioengineering and genetic enhancement threaten to dislodge it. To appreciate children as gifts is to accept them as they come, ...
I have a new post at Patheos in anticipation of Mother's Day. It begins:
Yesterday I heard Betsy Stevenson, of the Wharton School of Business, talking about happiness and being a Mom. She said, on Marketplace, "There is an unhappy fact to ponder this Mother's Day: Women with ...
I turned in my thesis last Friday night. Well, kind of. I finished my thesis last Friday night and submitted it by email only to discover on Monday that I had submitted a draft from twelve hours earlier. A draft complete with notes like "INSERT QUOTE HERE," no title page, no ...
I have a new post on her.meneutics about the ethical and theological concerns raised by the Pill. It begins: The Pill turned 50 this year, and Time magazine commemorated the anniversary last week with Nancy Gibbs's cover story, "Love, Sex, Freedom and the Paradox of the Pill." ...
There's a little girl in Penny's class who always arrives with armfuls of stuff. A transformer. A wooden crawfish. A princess. A baby doll. Something different every day, thrust into the hands of her teachers. Penny has never been particularly impressed with stuff. She ...
2011
