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 ...