I've been reading a lot of Flannery O'Connor recently, and I came across her thoughts (as a devout Roman Catholic) on birth control. In a letter to a friend, she writes:

"The Church's stand on birth control is the most absolutely spiritual of all her stands and with all of us ...

I have a new piece at her.meneutics, the Christianity Today blog. Regular readers of this blog will recognize some of the ideas, although it does contain new material as well. It begins:

The word retarded has made the news lately. The Special Olympics designated March 3rd as ...

I met a Wycliffe Bible translator a few years ago. He described the cultural differences he encountered upon living on an island in the Philippines. In a community meeting, people argued vociferously and passionately against one another. The room seemed split almost down the ...

We're moving next year. Just for the year while Peter goes back to school. But it still means packing our things and finding new doctors and new friends and, most worrisome to me, a new school for Penny.

So I went online and looked at the website for the school system where ...

A few years back, I came across a passage in which God instructs the Israelites to set apart six cities as "cities of refuge," places where people may flee if they unintentionally kill another person. (See Deuteronomy 19 for a fuller explanation.) And it struck me then that ...

First, I have a new post on 843 Acres discussing euthanasia: "Euthanasia and the Right to be a Burden." 

Second, two years ago, I went out to Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Writing, and I'm headed back in April. I'll be leading a "circle" on Writing as Ministry, and I ...

As readers of this blog know, my husband and I have given up alcohol for Lent. In my initial post on the topic ("Considering Lent: Disruptive Grace"), I wrote about my hope that deliberately changing a habit would open my eyes to see more of God's work in the world. I hoped ...

Today, I am headed to Edenton, North Carolina, for a visit and a bookreading. It's my hometown, although I haven't lived there in over two decades. Still, its streets and buildings and stories and, most of all, people, shaped me, and I am grateful for the gifts of that place. ...

A few weeks ago, a reader of this blog wrote to ask me what I thought about the use of "the r-word" in movies. She wrote about a movie where one scene includes a joke about the word "retard." In her words, "I found the movie in it's entirety funny even when one scene made me ...

I have a new post on The Park Forum: "Work: A Curse or a Blessing?"

When my husband was in college, he and his roommates were captivated by Christian asceticism. "Beat my body and make it my own," was one of their mottos. This discipline mostly translated into not sleeping much and fasting from meals on a regular basis. It seemed a bit silly ...

I'm planning to write more about "the R-word" (and even the designation of the word retarded as "the R-word") next week. For those of you interested in more reading right now, I'll commend to you Louise Kinross' comments on BLOOM:"The R-Word: It's a Hateful Slur That's Got to ...

When Penny was three-weeks old, I was on the phone, telling the story of her birth to a friend. I had gone over all those details so many times by that point, it was a relief to ask her the question, "How are you?" She talked about their kids, and then moved on to the frustration ...

Last fall, an old friend and I spent a weekend together. We talked about everything–kids,faith, birthday parties and school and church. But at the end of the weekend, my friend asked, "Do you always live in this place?"

"What place?"

"This place –talking about intellectual things ...

I have a new post on Her.meneutics called "Eliminating Suffering or Eliminating People: When Genetic Testing Threatens our Common Humanity." It begins:

Imagine sitting in a doctor's office and receiving this news:

Good morning, Mrs. Santos. I have the results of the screening ...