Killer Wines from Toe Tag Winery

My family and I have started a new hobby: wine making. We don’t have access to fresh grapes until this fall so we are using kits from Wine Expert. We have an Australian Syrah in the carboy and a Chilean Malbec in the primary fermentor (a plastic bucket). Next month we might try a chocolate [...]

Avoid Ossification

Susan and I prayed together nightly for most of our marriage. Sometimes the prayers were short but we seldom skipped a night for more than three decades. It was a cherished habit. Several years ago I entered a season of spiritual questioning. The questions made praying seem hypocritical so I waited for God to woo [...]

The Lighthouse Company

I’m launching my new fiction series for young readers in June. The Lighthouse Company (TLC) is a group of kids who meet in the Cape Myra lighthouse near the Makah Indian Reservation in Washington. Ten-year-old JJ Tyler comes every summer to stay with his grandpa, the lighthouse keeper. JJ leads TLC in solving mysteries, finding [...]

Survivor’s Guilt

There is survivor’s guilt in widowhood; at least for me. Survivor’s guilt is, “a deep feeling of guilt often experienced by those who have survived some catastrophe that took the lives of many others; (it) derives in part from a feeling that they did not do enough to save the others who perished and in [...]

Faith-Colored Glasses

I became a Christian at 18 and was an elder in a house church at 23. I spent the next 25 years in ministry but began questioning some aspects of my faith as I passed 50. Perhaps it was because I no longer served in church leadership and didn’t have to have all the answers. [...]

Imaginary Friend

God is the ultimate Imaginary Friend. This doesn’t mean he is unreal, only that we have to use our imaginations to picture him since he is immaterial. Because there is nothing tangible to experience with our five senses we have to conjure him from other images. Training the imagination to “see” the invisible God involves [...]

Control and Influence

Thoughtful people like you and me realize we don’t have control over most of the important things in life. We have absolutely no say in our lineage, genetics or heritage. Birth, and—in most instances—death, are out of our hands. We do, however, exert a vital influence on ourselves and others through our thoughts, words and [...]

The Evangelical Mind

The book I quoted in my last post—When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God by T. M. Luhrmann—was recently featured in the New York Times Review of Books. Molly Worthen wrote that the book is, “the most insightful study of evangelical religion in many years.” Worthen comments on two themes that [...]