I have been reposting older content lately. I like going back and reading my own posts. They make me smile and they make me think and I hope they do one or the other for you, too. If they do both, all the better! But I am committed to a bit of a new thing: […]

Memorial Day is past; it is now officially "The Season of the Porch!" I have declared it so! We live in a very old home. The exact date she was built is sketchy. We have some books that came with the home when we purchased her almost 26 years ago, and they allude to the […]

It's allergy season in Iowa and my husband is suffering. Sneezy, red, watery eyes, head stuffed. It's rough. So rough that we decided -- for everyone's sake -- he should sleep in our guest room for a bit. Usually this means I don't have to use the white noise machine placed perfectly on my bedside […]

I love the newsletter The Marginalian by Maria Popova. It's brilliant and so well curated it is almost as if you read an entire life-altering book (or two!) when you immerse yourself in her musings. She wrote this recently and I cannot stop thinking about it: "You are the only custodian of your own integrity […]

I am in the midst of re-reading one of my favorite books, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality, by Ronald Rolheiser. I seek out Rolheiser's writing when my weariness about the American church and its unhappy romance with politics causes me to feel despair. I ground myself in the deeper truths of […]

When my daughter was young, she had a ruthless Eastern European piano teacher. Ruthless. My girl was learning to overcome some shyness and self-consciousness, and we had hoped learning to play the piano would instill confidence. Not with this instructor, though. Our daughter practiced and practiced, playing the same song over and over again until […]