How My Mother’s Life Interprets Mine

The following is an excerpt from a longer talk, titled “We’re All Absalom: Emerging Into Adulthood Alongside Our Parents,” which can be heard on Ancient Faith Radio. I delivered the talk at the 2017 Antiochian Archdiocese Convention for the Young Adult Ministry. The photo above is of my mother on her wedding day in 1972. Her name was Sandy, and my mother was always…

From Darkness, Light

At this time of year, we Christians begin thinking about the shining of the Light in the darkness. The Lord Jesus will soon be born in our festal calendar, and He is lauded in our hymns as the Sun of Righteousness, the Orient from on high Whose coming at this moment begins to enlighten the nations. And this lines up poetically quite beautifully with…

Shouldn’t This Thing Just Work? An Intentional Christianity

I get frustrated at machines sometimes, especially computerized machines. They do the most inexplicable things at times. When I was a stagehand, we called this IWF (Intermittent Weird Failure). IWF when I was a stagehand was eminently addressable—in most cases, we just switched out the offending part and went on with our lives. But I don’t always have that option out in the world…

Haphazard Reminiscence and Gratitude

Forgive me a bit of rambling reminiscence and reflection, if you don’t mind. I guess this is one of the hazards of committing to blogging every day for forty days. I’m not sure why, but I’ve been remembering some things from more than twenty years ago lately, from shortly after my family moved to North Carolina, three weeks after I graduated from high school…