For more than 30 years, I have enjoyed the Japanese art of origami. For most of that time, creating objects by folding a single sheet of paper was a hobby. Scrap paper is literally everywhere, so finding material has never been a problem. A brightly colored ad from a magazine would become a flower. A…
Category: Protestant Spirituality
Facing the Dust Together: What Kate Bowler’s “Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved)” Taught Me about Ash Wednesday
For a few years, my middle child was afraid of Ash Wednesday. He’d sit patiently through the homily, mumble along with Psalm 51 as best he could, but balk at the main event: the imposition of ashes. So he’d stay behind in the pew while his brother, sister, and whichever parent wasn’t leading worship filed…
Don’t Be a Hero! And Other Guidelines for Choosing a Lenten Discipline
How should you decide what you are going to give up—or take up—for Lent this year? Here’s my plan: I’m going to wake up an hour earlier than usual, depriving myself of sleep and devoting that hour to prayer; read meditatively through the whole New Testament, paying particular attention to living the Sermon on the…