Opening the door, or in other words, the practice of hospitality, has always mattered as a religious principle. Not only to religious communities greeting their guests, but to the very purpose of religious life. As a posture of open-hearted welcome, hospitality insists that only when we warmly greet the stranger will we be capable of […]
+ Read More
Freshly returned from a pilgrimage to Transylvania, I recall questions that beckoned me there. Who were the early ones giving voice to the faith that claims me today, and what landscape and history inspired their spiritual quests and convictions 500 years ago? What new discoveries could be unveiled in my heart by visiting these sites […]
+ Read More
We’d driven almost 3,000 miles, from the northern Midwest to the southwestern tip of the U.S. and were making our way home last month before I confessed that I hadn’t yet found the right words to describe the extraordinary landscape we were passing through. Expansive wasn’t big enough. Astonishing wasn’t specific enough. Thrilling didn’t do […]
+ Read More
I once had a dream about words growing on bushes, blossoms free for the picking that I was gathering in a basket. Since then, I have come to believe that words are more like heavy ripe fruit or, possibly, like stones. They have heft. They weigh down the basket quickly when collected. One needs to […]
+ Read More
notes from the Festival of Faith and Writing I love a good question. So when I heard novelist Valerie Sayers speak at the Festival of Faith and Writing, I perked up when she asked a salient question and I’ve been carrying it around ever since. “What kind of writer stays on only one side of […]
+ Read More