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Flunking Sainthood

Stephen Carter lives in rural Wyoming where he edits Sunstone magazine and acts as primary caretaker for the world’s most beautiful baby girl. This excerpt is taken from Carter’s new book What of the Night?, published here by permission of Zarahemla Books. Writing As RepentanceBy Stephen Carter For me, writing is repentance–even though I dislike…

Last week we explored the big picture of the decline and fall of Israel (the northern kingdom) and Judah (the southern kingdom). Remember that the north fell to Assyra first, in 722 B.C., and that the south managed to hold on for more than a century until Jerusalem was finally ransacked in 587 B.C. The…

Last month, Random House’s Three Rivers imprint released Shut Up about Your Perfect Kid: A Survival Guide for Ordinary Parents of Special Kids by Patricia (Patty) Konjoian, whose daughter has bipolar disorder, and her sister Gina Gallagher, whose daughter has Asperger’s. Both moms wanted to write about the lighter side of raising less-than-perfect kids in…

You know how on Facebook, you sometimes overhear other people’s conversations that you wish you hadn’t? Well, this one came up on my Facebook news feed because one of my friends (the last and only sane individual in this conversation) left a comment. I have retained the punctuation and spelling of the original conversation participants…

The Metaphysics of Mormon Sacrament Meetings, by Matt Bowman The heart of the Great Tait-Riess Worship Smackdown of 2010 seems to me a dispute about how precisely we should understand worship and what worship is supposed to accomplish. Beyond any sort of commentary on the content of the discussion, I’m pleased that it’s taking place…

Recently at my church, the regular adult Sunday School teacher was on vacation and the assigned substitute was ill. I offered to substitute and was handed a lesson plan just before I walked in to class. Obviously, there wasn’t a lot of time to prepare, so I had to wing it by primarily giving an…

The only thing I knew about Julian of Norwich before reading Amy Frykholm’s excellent new “contemplative biography” of her was that she was the saint who said “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” My friend Kelly likes to quote that when I’m particularly stressed…

No, I haven’t yet read The Shallows, the recent non-fiction book that everyone’s talking about. It claims that the more time we spend on the Internet, the more shallow and ignorant we become. I wouldn’t know. I’ve been too busy catching up with Facebook to digest the book’s central argument. Last night our family broke…

Over the last five years I have become passionate about what’s going on in the “emerging church conversation,” a grassroots network of Christian thinkers, mostly skewing younger, who claim a grace-full Christian faith that’s grounded in the teachings of Jesus without legalism or fundamentalism. As far as I know, I am the only person who…

It’s been an exciting week for the Twible. Thanks to an article in the Guardian on Sunday, there are new Twible fans in far-flung places like New Zealand, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Australia, Bhutan, the UK and the Czech Republic. Welcome to the Twible community, all! Also, @Zeus_Olympios is following me on Twitter. I guess they…
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