This week, in the days and hours leading up to today’s celebration of motherhood:   – both my kids used me as a human napkin without my permission; apparently my shirt makes a good substitute for wet wipes or paper [...]

[Note: this post has been updated since yesterday when Beliefnet was experiencing technical issues and my brain was working less clearly.] This weekend I finally watched Life of Pi. The movie, directed by Ang Lee and inspired by the 2001 novel [...]

More Americans than usual will probably be praying this Sunday- this by implication, according to a report this week by CNN, summarized by Religion Today. No, it’s not the National Day of Prayer or another Billy Graham crusade- it’s the [...]

“There are no ‘heroes’,” an old theology prof used to say. I disagree.  There are no superheroes, yes, despite what Nietsche might claim- but heroes?  They’re around. Some friends and I were discussing the movie, The Hobbit.  One friend said he [...]

How do you describe a smell? Surely, Hemingway or Faulkner or another of the real literary greats could help here. For the time being, imagine oregano on steroids. That’s what happened when I emerged from Whole Foods the other day [...]

Today’s musical feature comes much in the same spirit of Andrew Sullivan’s “Mental Health Breaks.” Chalk it up to the Scottish side of my family, but I guess I have a weakness for folk rock bands that magically blend some [...]

Fellow saint and sinner Tammy gives below another honest, raw examination of her life through the lens of God’s grace.  God’s grace, not our own often clumsy efforts to achieve goodness or live right or follow our own hearts or [...]

This week with the start of another school year and a few more things added to our family’s schedule, I’ve found myself even more glued to my iPhone- so glued, in fact, that just the other day I found myself [...]

Did God help Gabrielle Douglas win?  That was the question posed by Salon writer Mary Elizabeth Williams in a recent piece penned for the magazine and forwarded by fellow saint and sinner Irene Lin.  It’s an interesting question, one that [...]

Fellow saint and sinner Saskia de Vries, whom we recently spoke with about neuroscience and theology (see our four-part interview, The Brain on Faith) is also a preacher.  She preached the below sermon to her congregation yesterday, and kindly agreed to [...]