June 2010 - [Matt Seddon]
In college, I began studying anthropology and decided religion was something other people did. I left the church for about 15 years. However, I never fully departed. I made my academic focus the archaeology of religion and ritual. I kept a variety of odd practices and prayer. Finally, I returned to my church about seven years ago and have not looked back. ...
April 2010 - [Debbie Buese]
The church that I belonged to as a child was built on solid ground and my Dad was the pastor. The world had been created in seven calendar days and Jonah was swallowed by a real whale. ... I didn't see my sister Becky's disease coming ...
February 2010 - [Craig Wirth]
I noted a Yahoo search shows 740-million web citations about understanding faith. Therefore, it seems that I am not the only one who has questioned faith, sought to develop it and often challenged it. Somehow, I kept making the quest to understand faith too difficult. It isn’t that the Good Lord doesn’t give us some pretty concrete examples of how faith works. I just thought it had to be in some complex and mysterious interpretation of a concept that happened thousands of years ago. I discovered that I looked too hard to solve the mystery of faith. It was right there in black and white in my black and white spotted dog. Indeed, I finally understood faith from Bob the Dog....
January 2010 -[Jonathan Gardner]
I have always been a believer and have had faith that there is some high being out there that watches over us and guides us. In this day and age, it has become very hard to maintain that belief.
A lot of people, though, have a hard time admitting it, but I’ll come out and say it: I do. There are a lot of reasons for disbelief, but for me, I don’t understand why people who have always been kind and caring toward one another get stricken with vicious illnesses. Why do I have such a strong opinion on this? Because I have gone through and am still going through this. ...
December 2009 – [ Janet Frasier]
It was this time last year that the effects of the Great Recession began to cut deeply into our family. What were uncertain times during the summer, were now certainly bleak and destined to be long lasting. Friends with professional careers had been out of work for months. …
September 2009 - [David McGlynn]
"I was an occasional Catholic until my parents divorced in the mid-1980s. Hardly a month after the divorce was finalized, my father left Houston, Texas, where we lived, for a seaside town in Orange County, California. The woman who would become my stepmother went with him. She was a passionate, lifelong evangelical Christian, and about year after arriving in California, she became a children’s pastor at a large evangelical church in Orange County. …
October 2009 - [Lori Morris]
Michael Peterman was born on April 23, 1964. His father —my brother — and his mother were both barely 18 years old. at the time. Soon after Michael's birth, his father enlisted in the Army, having very few options to support his young family. …
August 2009 - [Lynn Nicholas]
Aryana’s mother died when she was born, plunging us into shock, pain and grief. Karen lying in the intensive care unit, the new born Aryana on her chest, Karen connected to life only by a respirator, Karen an illusion of life. …
June 2009 - [Anne Peterson]
On Mother’s Day, the moms I looked forward to seeing most were the mothers at St. Paul’s. The mothers, the single mothers, the fathers, the surly teenagers, the boisterous children. And on Father’s Day, I will again be looking forward to seeing all of the community that usually populates the back five pews. …
May 2009 - [Lisa Groen Braner]
I’ve been thinking about all of the mothers I admire lately. Mother’s Day is just around the corner and I’ve been busy planning a day to honor them with something mothers rarely have enough of—quiet. … |
