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The Second Mountain

May 2019

Have I ever experienced a day more “head-twisting” than last Thursday in Denver? It began with a gathering at Denver’s snazzy Convention Center. I had agreed to host a forum with sixty business leaders before the Colorado Prayer Luncheon, but as a freelancer with precious little business experience, I had to search for something worth discussing. Fortunately, I had just read the new book by New York Times columnist David Brooks, The Second Mountain. Brooks describes the journey on which ...

Easter at Columbine

April 2019

I spent Easter weekend participating in events commemorating the 20th anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School, which sits twenty miles from my home. Tension filled the air around Denver as the anniversary approached. Half a million students were kept home from school as the FBI and local law enforcement searched for a young woman who, infatuated with Columbine, flew in from Florida and bought a pump-action shotgun and ammunition, sparking fears of another incident. The mass murder at ...

What Makes Friday Good?

March 2019

Along with most Christians, I have been reflecting on the death of Jesus this Lenten season. How odd, it seems, that we now call the darkest day of history Good Friday, and that the cross, an emblem of brutal execution, has become the symbol of our faith. By way of explanation, theologians propose various theories of the atonement, and point ahead to Easter as a template of how God redeems tragedy into triumph. Something else, however, captures my interest this ...

Statistical Love

February 2019

I recently listened to a speech by Peter Singer, the world’s most influential living philosopher, according to The New Yorker. Much of our compassion and charity is misguided, Singer argued. We should be focusing on how to do the most good for the most people. As an example, Singer mentioned the noble cause of providing seeing-eye dogs for the blind. It takes $40,000 to train the dog and the recipient, whereas a treatment costing just fifty dollars would cure a ...

Aging Grace-fully

January 2019

My grandmother, born in Atlanta in 1899, was a classic Southern woman of the era, with the singular ambition of rearing a family. She had no checking account, and managed the house on a cash allowance from her husband. She tried driving once, and after steering the car into a ditch never attempted it again. I picture Carrie Ware, my grandmother, as I knew her in my childhood: a short woman with graying hair and a pale complexion, slightly bow-legged, ...

The Second Mountain

Easter at Columbine

What Makes Friday Good?

Statistical Love

Aging Grace-fully

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