Blog Posts

I went to prison last Monday: the maximum security unit of Folsom Prison, the California institution made famous by a visit from Johnny Cash, who gave a concert there in 1968.  “We arranged a limo for you,” said my host Jim Carlson who met me at the gate, then laughingly escorted my wife and me to the most beat-up, bedraggled van I have ever seen.  “You’ve heard of California’s budget cutbacks, right?” Jim explained. Three times we had to exit ...

Last weekend was the fourth anniversary of the rollover accident which I describe in the first chapter of What Good Is God? Appropriately, we spent it with some wonderful friends from the church in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where I spoke on Prayer the day before my Ford Explorer slipped off an icy road and tumbled over and over down an embankment. February 25, 2007, was the longest day of my life.  In all I spent seven hours strapped to ...

A few days ago I got a letter from a Croatian man who introduced himself as the translator of my book What’s So Amazing About Grace? into Croatian.  He asked if I would write a preface for the book specifically for Croatia.  “You have referred to the Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian experience during the recent war,” he said.  “Although the war ended over 15 years ago, the wounds are still here and we are very very far from true reconciliation.”  He went on ...

My life divides into geographical thirds—one-third in Atlanta, one-third in Chicago, and one-third in Colorado—and each has presented a different perspective on winter. In the Atlanta of my childhood enough snow would fall to accumulate on the ground maybe once every two or three years.  These were magical days of cancelled school, snow forts and snowball fights, and snowmen decorated with branches for arms, radishes for eyes, and a carrot for a nose.  The magic was ephemeral, however: a week ...