Nothing in my hands I bring. It’s a line from an old hymn, and a refrain that periodically echoes through my imagination. Any Christian could tell you it describes a core element of our theology, that salvation is not earned, but is a grace freely given. But true as this may be as a matter of doctrine, as a matter of practice this lovely idea wars with the implicit assumption most of my life...
September 16, 2025 “I didn’t want Charlie Kirk to die, I wanted him to be different,” my friend Jonathan wrote in a recent substack. Jonathan is a black man, the kind of person Kirk might have had in mind when he said “Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.” –...
Use this as a self-guided meditation to practice finding what matters most in the every day. Gather: Clean, unfolded laundry Something to write with / on A snack (A friend, why not?!) Introduction: Humanity has long held up the good the true and the beautiful as core virtues. For me, these all stem from God, because this is who God is. God, and thus these qualities of God, pervade the whole...
August 29, 2025 In a world where every summer must be christened a new flavor of ___ girl summer, mine for the past few years have increasingly been singing the same melody: one long, hot, potato summer. Sitting down with my breakfast at the appointed time on the first day of school, kids safely dispatched, to resume my discipline of writing. Quiet house, alarm set to remind me to get up in time...
June 26, 2025 *Can I be honest with you? *said the chronic oversharer . . . I write about finding what matters most in the ordinary. But if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that isn’t because that’s the place I naturally inhabit. I feel a bit sheepish saying it out loud, but I have always wanted to be great, like Belle singing around the fountain in the town square. A part of me loves...
June 12, 2025 Birthday Cake Start with a clean house.OK, well, if not clean exactly,Your messes discreetly set aside.Company ready. Flour the floor,Inadvertently, as youFlour the cake pans,7 of them,To make, as requestedChocolate and strawberry. Old champagne in the fridge,Was it leftover from Easter?Flat for weeks,Like so many things left around the housePast their prime,You failed to discard it...
June 6, 2025 I don’t recall exactly the circumstances in which I began telling my son: “We can learn how to do hard things!” It became a mantra during Covid, when I was, unwillingly, his sub Pre-K teacher when the world went virtual overnight. We—mostly I—would say it repeatedly, almost chanting, to push back the protests that inevitably erupted when asked to do something...
June 3, 2025 There’s a scene in Gossip Girl, a show I greatly enjoyed while living in New York City during and after law school as a mental break from all that law—and which made me, in its portrayal of the emotional and relational challenges of my city’s super wealthy, grateful for my ordinary life, and in full disclosure, a show which I’m enjoying again years later, watching through a second...
May 29, 2025 Haven does not want to be on a stage. It is clear on those accidental occasions when she is put on one anyway, when, for example, the current of the school calendar winds its way through events like ‘spring concert,’ and ‘poetry festival.’ With a dozen other four-year-olds, she is, with great ceremony and enthusiasm, ushered to the small elevated platform in the school gym. Guiding...
“How can you tell a story about plants or chores that would be very interesting?” A friend offered this honest response to my invitations to join the upcoming experiential storytelling workshops. “Maybe it takes someone who’s good at creative writing,” he continued, with an unspoken note of regret: And I’m not that someone. Perhaps you have also asked this question. Maybe, like my friend...