Found Object: Snow-covered Tree
[Crosswalk, January 28, 2000]
My mother-in-law' s phone call woke us up. “Hello?” my husband said, groggily. I could hear her voice piping, five hundred miles away: “It snowed last night! Two inches!”
Rock for Life
[Beliefnet, January 24, 2000]
When I saw the pink earplugs in his hand, I felt older than I’ve ever felt in my life.
I had been invited to be a speaker at an all-day rock concert, and the host had warned me in a prior e-mail that the groups following me would be pretty loud. The afternoon bands, I was told, were “kind of mellow -- my mom likes these bands.” (Reading that sentence was the second oldest I’ve felt.) But “the bands at night are hardcore, which is very loud and the lyrics are basically screamed out.”
More than Suffering
[Crosswalk, January 24, 2000]
Q. My friend Mike was trying to explain Christian faith to me over dinner one night, and he said something I could understand. He said to look at the Son of God, unjustly strung up like a criminal.
Found Object: Big Cheese
[Crosswalk, January 24, 2000]
A few weeks after Christmas the mega-vast-o-giant-super-warehouse-store is nearly empty. A few shoppers linger in the dog food and vacuum cleaner aisles, looking diminutive as fairies. Whole acres of luggage and appliances are deserted, and the vacant cement floors are smooth and clean. I expect to see a tumbleweed roll by.
Dark Side of the Moon
[Beliefnet, January 10, 2000]
Some people say that art—make that Art—has become the secular substitute for religion. It sure acts like a religion: it's produced by high priests revered as conduits of a mystical power—in this case, creativity; it's tended and interpreted by initiates trained in its hidden wisdom; and it's mostly incomprehensible to folks on the outside. I've been a big fan of visual arts ever since I was an eight-year-old with my parents' big book of Salvador Dali on my lap. But the fact is, more people don't get Art in our generation than in any one before. Art responds to this by ridiculing them.
Question About Salvation
[Crosswalk, January 2000]
Q. I was raised in a nominally Jewish home, then spent some time as a proudly “confessing atheist” before turning to non-theistic Eastern religion. I now honestly believe that historic Christianity is the faith with the most universal application to all mankind
Found Object: Body
[Crosswalk, January 2000]
Here we are. Over the doorstep and into a dazzling new millennium, fraught with magnificence and fear, and perhaps with consequence -- hard to tell at this point. At any rate, we feel pretty dazzled and quite self-important. We’re alive *now*! What an achievement! What did we win?
Chasing Amy
[Christianity Today, January 2000]
Amy Tracy prepared to die.
She had linked her arms through those of fellow pro-choice activists as they surrounded a van stopped outside an abortion clinic. Inside the van were women in the second trimester of pregnancy
Susan B. Anthony, Pro-Life Feminist
[Focus on the Family, January 2000]
Susan B. Anthony is a hero of the feminist movement, and with good cause; she was a trailblazer in the women's movement of the late 1800's. A Quaker who never married, Anthony devoted her energy
Crones and Starlets
[Religion News Service, May 14, 1996]
My friend Carolyn's icon of Mary of Egypt is completed, and on Sunday it was leaning against the brass candlestick on the altar. It shows a wild woman, fierce, gray hair flying out around a weathered face, her bony arm raised aloft.