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Thin Places

I have a new post at her.menuetics. It begins: In her new and buzzworthy book, For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage, The New York Times‘s Tara Parker-Pope examines what brain chemistry and genes have to do with happy marriages. She begins a recent Well column with a question: “Why do some men and…

A few months into our life with a child with Down syndrome, I realized that we live in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right resources. We are within an hour of the best children’s hospital in the nation, a hospital that has a satellite office 15 minutes away.…

I was recently asked to write, in 100 words or less, an answer to the question: “How is the Holy Spirit at work in the world today?” Tough assignment, but here’s what I came up with: In nudges and whispers. Like a seed growing, imperceptible at first. Like wind, invisible, refreshing, transformative. Like water, cleansing,…

“We live in a culture that has replaced soul with self. This reduction turns people into either problems or consumers. Insofar as we acquiesce in that replacement, we gradually but surely regress in our identity, for we end up thinking of ourselves and dealing with others in marketplace terms: everyone we meet is either a…

Peter and I have been worried lately because Penny seems to care too much about how her actions impact our feelings. For instance, she had an accident while sitting on Peter’s shoulders. So the collar of his shirt got wet. I took her home to change. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. I finally…

I’ve decided to start another weekly Friday feature, which will simply be a list of articles I’ve read in the past week that seem relevant and interesting to the topics I otherwise discuss on this blog. I won’t comment at length here, but I will provide a sentence or two so you can know if…

Michael Sandel’s The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in an the Age of Genetic Engineering is thoughtful, well-written, and, despite Sandel’s academic credentials, accessible to any reader. It is also very short (128 very small pages), and thus it is a great place to start if you are interested in learning some of the basic ethical…

“Don’t grab!” We hear those words a lot. It might be Peter or me admonishing one of our children. Or, just as likely, Penny reprimanding her brother. Despite the frequency of the command, grabbing is a part of the daily routine. Penny grabs a toy from William. William grabs my phone. Penny grabs the water…

I have a new post at her.meneutics about the spiritual significance of Williams Syndrome. It is called “The Anti-Racist, Anti-Fear Gene.” Incidentally, the title is somewhat misleading as Williams Syndrome involves the absence of certain genes, but that’s somewhat beside the point. The post begins: Over the past month, NPR has addressed various aspects of…

I have a new post at BLOOM: Parenting Children with Disabilities. I’m printing it here in full, although I also encourage you to click over to BLOOM when you’re done reading and scroll through the content there. Anyway, here’s the post, which should make sense of the photo, taken when Penny was in the Emergency…
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