My youngest son is addicted to the piano. He plays it for hours every day. He watches endless videos of people playing piano. He spends his money on piano books. He falls asleep listening to […]
Tag: Friendship
Celebration & a long friendship with God
Immediate friends are a lot of fun. But long-time friendships are deep and deserve regular celebrations. When my wife threw a party for my 50th birthday, she pulled together an incredible group of people who […]
If you don’t need your community, you don’t have one.
I was with a friend who had gone through a major life trauma and he was talking about a conversation he’d just had with another friend. “He told me, ‘Don’t put any expectations on me,’” my […]
17 ways to foster neighborliness
We have lost the art of being neighbors. Our cars have killed it, keeping us from walking our neighborhoods as we jump into them and speed away without talking to anyone. Our phones have killed […]
On turning 50
I’ve been saying the word fairly frequently over the last few months, trying to get my mouth used to it. “Fifty.” It’s got a nice, clean sound to it. It’s not cumbersome like “forty-seven.” And […]
Recovering the lost art of friendship
I picked up the phone yesterday and called Steven, a friend of more than two decades. He couldn’t answer right away but called me back as soon as he was free. Now, Steven and I don’t […]
Evil is real — the Gospel according to Harry Potter, part 2
My kids were too little to read and take in the Harry Potter books when they were being written and released, so my wife and I waited for, bought, and read aloud to one another each […]
The God who doesn't shame us for having questions
Some friends and I were sitting around the dinner table, talking about Thomas. The Bible calls him The Twin, but we’ve settled on calling him The Doubter. Poor guy. Thomas has a bad rep. Partly, […]
Tell me I'm wrong
Some of the most important moments in my life were times when people who cared for me pulled me aside and told me I was wrong. As kids, people told us we were wrong all […]
How is community formed in our new nomadic era?
The way community has been formed for much of the last 4,000 years has come unravelled in the last few decades. Where agrarian societies were primarily stable farming communities — your farm and your neighbors’ farms […]