Should atheists in the military have chaplains to serve their needs? That's the question asked in a recent New York Times article, "Atheists Seeks Chaplain Role in the Military." The article discusses the spiritual climate of the military, which it claims is overwhelmingly Christian. ...

It sounds like good news. Researchers have developed a non-invasive test to detect Down syndrome early on in pregnancy. As this new test becomes widely available, it will replace current screening tests for Down syndrome. Any woman who takes the advice of the American College ...

I have a guest post today on Motherlode, the parenting blog of the New York Times. It begins:

Our middle child, William, had trouble sleeping as a newborn. And as an infant. And really up until he was eight months old. He fussed. He squirmed. He screamed. The slightest noise ...

It's easy to be dismissive of children's capacity for spiritual understanding. I've written recently about my trouble explaining Easter to our kids and about our messy prayer times as a family. There's a part of me that wants to give up on theology with our children until they ...

Over the course of the past week I have soothed Marilee after her brother bit her on the arm (Look carefully at the oval ring of teeth marks in the photo to the left. In his defense, he seemed shocked by her tears and said, "Mom, I was pretending she was food"), cleaned up a ...

My friend Jessica Bigby has offered a Perfectly Human post before: "Walking Toward Freedom." In it, she talks about what it meant–both physically and spiritually–to start learning to walk without her canes. Recently, I learned from Jess that after years of assuming that skiing ...

Recently Peter and I took a walk together. We were talking about some trouble Penny's had in school lately. Peter said, "Do you want to pray?" And so we did. It was easy, refreshing, and totally unusual for us.

After nearly two decades as a practicing Christian, I still have ...

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

-Benjamin Franklin

There's been a fair amount of reporting on the celebrations that followed immediately after news of Osama Bin Laden's death, with people swarming Times Square and flocking to the White House to cheer and dance and start a party.

But members of various religious communities have ...

Years ago I read Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy, by Carlos Eire. It was written in the wake of the Elian Gonzalez affair, and Professor Eire (he teaches at Yale) wrote his memoir of growing up in Cuba before Castro took over. Last fall I heard Prof. Eire ...

A long time ago I realized that when people first look at Penny, they don't see her. They see Down syndrome. I do the same thing. When I see someone in a wheelchair, I struggle to pay attention to the individual in front of me. The disability makes it hard for me to see the ...

"An 'innocent' Jesus does not overpower sin. A righteous Jesus does. The world needs less innocence and more righteousness."

–Greg Carey, Sinners

In this week's New York Times Magazine, Benoit Denizet-Louis profiles a place called St. Anthony's House, where alcoholics can go and ...

We practice praying as a family. Sometimes we have our kids repeat the Lord's Prayer after us. Sometimes we go around in a circle and say one thing we're thankful for and one thing we need. Last night was a freestyle night.

William started out prostrate, and his prayer was something ...

I wrote a few weeks back about a little boy from Zambia who died wearing William's clothes. His name was Francis. Our friends Holly and Eric Nelson, founders of the Special Hope Network, cared for him. They recently wrote to say that another little boy, Gabriel (who has been ...

Last month my husband Paul and I went to Israel to celebrate our 40th anniversary. One of the places that we visited was Bethesda. Unearthed pools with high Greek columns, wide steps and stoned walkways leading to smaller pools were before us. For many years I had imagined taking ...