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Thin Places

Every Friday when I pick Penny up from school, she has stickers on her back. I ask her about them. And she tells me, “I did a great job with Miss Sharon, Mom!” Miss Sharon is her physical therapist. So this past Friday when I asked, she was a little more specific: “I did awesome…

A few months after our daughter Penny was born with Down syndrome, a friend of mine lamented the fact that Penny’s diagnosis would narrow my field of interest and influence. “I want you to be able to write and talk about more than Down syndrome,” she said. I agreed. I wasn’t particularly interested in becoming…

I have a new post at her.meneutics called, “Yoga, an Exercise in Discernment.” It begins: About 16 million adults in the United States practice yoga — an increase of 85 percent from 2004 to 2008 — and the Los Angeles Times reports that both Christian and Jewish groups are incorporating the Eastern meditation practice into…

On Good Friday, Peter and I went to our church to participate in a 24-hour prayer vigil. We’ve never done something like that before, hired a babysitter on a Friday night so we could go pray with some other people we don’t know. It was after that experience that I realized, prayer is stupid. Well,…

I wrote these lines in August of 2007, when Penny was 20 months old: When Penny was born, among the hundreds of gifts we received was an orchid. And this orchid was like no other orchid we had ever seen. It was beautiful, with dozens of fuchsia blooms. I was intimidated enough by the thought…

So I never did get to tell you more about the Festival of Faith and Writing… Soon, I promise. For now, I’ve got a post at Patheos in response to the question: “What’s Sex Got to do with It (Christianity, that is)?” (in 100 words or less). My response: Tenderness. Ecstasy. Vulnerability. Nakedness. Desire. The…

I returned last night from Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Writing. And I’m marking my calendar for 2012. It’s a wonderful conference. I heard great speakers, including Scott Cairns, Mary Carr, Eugene Peterson, Sara Miles, and Donna Freitas. They disagree with each other and represent a large swath of the Christian (and sometimes not-so-Christian)…

“A God you understand would be less than yourself.” Flannery O’Connor (The Habit of Being, 354) I was in church a few weeks ago, and during communion heard the following hymn (and I wish I could figure out how to let you hear it, but I’m not that technologically adept. Click here to hear a…

“Almost any spiritual writer ought to wear thin for you. It’s like reading criticism of poetry all the time and not reading the poetry. Spiritual writers have a limited purpose and can be very dangerous, I suppose.” –Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being I’m headed off this morning to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for Calvin College’s…

I’m the Vice President of our local Down Syndrome Association, and we have a picnic in the spring. This year, our typical venue was booked. I volunteered the park up the hill from my home. Called the number on the sign. Went into the Parks and Recreation Office to book the event. Filled out the…
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