Like the rest of the country, I’m reeling from news of the terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon and the follow-up spree of violence and subsequent manhunt.  I keep flashing back to September 11, 2001, when I like most Americans sat glued to the television trying to absorb news that was unabsorbable.  Now, almost twelve years later, the cloud of fear and apprehension has descended again on the United States. I was in China the day of the marathon, on ...

Someone sent me this delightful video just as I was reading a book that explores the word redeem.  Slum children creating music out of garbage stands as a perfect metaphor for a word usually encountered in theology texts. Some twenty years ago Jerry Sittser, a religion professor at Whitworth College, was involved in a horrific auto accident.  A drunk driver hit the vehicle he was driving, killing Jerry’s mother, wife, and four-year-old daughter—three generations at once.  Jerry survived, along with ...

Those of us who live in snow lands love to complain about the weather. We tell stories about spending the night in a church basement when the highway shut down, and the time it got so cold that spit froze before it hit the ground. Local newscasters demonstrate how it’s actually possible to hammer a nail with a frozen banana, just so we watchers can feel proud of how tough we are. (Of course, we’re sitting inside as we watch ...