The young man had done everything right. He kept the commandments, lived honorably, and when he encountered Jesus, he asked the best possible question: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Yet when Jesus answered—"Sell what you have, give to the poor, and follow...
In her remarkable poem Obligations 2, Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier invites us to travel down a path of our choosing. It’s notable how each line of the poem draws us down the page, from reaction through action, into the rawness of grief, then finally...
That was the title of a recent column by Bret Stephens. He was talking about the political sphere and how protectionism, America First agendas, and antisemitism, among others, stalk like “moral and intellectual zombies” through our debates about government. But it also seems like an...
Forty years ago, one of us (we’ll leave it to you to identify her) taught juggling in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. From that experience comes the following counterintuitive lesson: juggling isn't a catching skill, it's a throwing skill. When beginners pick up juggling balls, they...
We promise that we won’t mimic a family member who takes a memorable trip and then insists on spending 2+ hours at Thanksgiving narrating a slide show while the turkey gets seriously over-cooked (of course, that’s just a hypothetical scenario). But … on our recent trip...
The ongoing pain for so many in our culture today has led some to adapt the stock greeting “How are you doing?”/ “I’m fine” into something more honest, more vulnerable, more reflective of the moment. “Frankly, I don’t know how I am doing until I...
Where is the tipping point between doing faithful work on behalf of your church and thinking it all depends on you? Not just you individually, but your whole board? You don’t want to let your fellow congregants down and you certainly don’t want to let...
In the 1910s and 1920s, four of the most influential figures of their era—Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs—began taking yearly camping trips together. They called themselves “The Vagabonds.” Imagine it: the man who perfected the assembly line, the genius of electric light, the...
“When you’re explaining, you’re losing.” Politicians of all stripes like to use this simple statement, often attributed to Ronald Reagan, as a guide to commanding attention and winning votes. A 2024 survey asked over 3,000 new car buyers how much a test-drive entered into their car-buying...