My sister once told me that she had no idea when I'd get married (I'm sure my well-carved independence made many wonder if I ever would), but that when it did happen, it would go fast.

Still, this didn't seem to reduce my sister's confusion when--two days after I stepped off the plane from a three-month sabbatical in Australia--I announced to her that I was getting married. Had I been dating someone when I set off on my travels, it might not have seemed so ludicruous. But I hadn't been. In fact, I decided to skip the whole dating part entirely.

It all began at the Starbucks on 96th Street somewhere during the spring of my senior year of college.
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The air hung thick and damp on the back porch of Dawn’s exotic fruit farm on the northeast corner of Australia’s Daintree rainforest. I sat on a plastic chair, one foot crossed underneath me, the other dangling a flip flop above the concrete floor of the brightly colored bed and breakfast. I began to think about what this gracefully aging Australian woman with wayward hair had just told me.
 
“Americans live to work. Australians work to live.”
 
With just three weeks left on my 10-week sabbatical on the underside of the world, I began to wonder if these words were true, and if they should mean something to me.Read more

In November I did what no thinking person would do in the middle of an economic crisis: I quit my job and traveled halfway around the world, to Australia.

I left behind a steady stream of income and a heap of security in the hope that I might find a little more freedom, creativity, and vision for the future. So, I jumped on a jet plane for a very long trip down south, where I would spend the next two and a half months connecting with old friends and rediscovering my Aussie side. (Quick interjection: I was born in Australia, but moved to the States when I was seven.)

Along the way, I picked up a thousand little lessons from those who have walked a few extra steps down life’s journey. Prominent among them was this concept of cultivating life.Read more

Friendship is a morsel of the Incarnation. As we partake of the bread and the wine, so friendship plays out Christ’s physicality in our lives.

Last week, one of my best friends moved 3,000 horrible miles across the country. Several months of unemployment, ambiguity about the future, and an increasing desire to live out west tugged my friend away from this place, and away from me. I hated to see her to go, but felt even more uneasy about her staying.

There seems to come a time with most good things for an ending to arrive, and resistance to that appropriate ending only prolongs the inevitable. The time had come for Rachel to leave, and I had to let her go.

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I did not grow up observing Lent, and my first impressions of the observance came mostly from people who seemed to care more about abstaining from chocolate and TV than seeking God. I figured that Lent was either a colossal waste of spiritual time or there was something more behind the curtain of this often misunderstood Christian practice.

I know I need a primer for Lent. Maybe you do too. Read more

I was too used to looking for serpents.

It all started a year ago. At that time, my housemates and I were looking for a new house to rent. We had found a tidy ranch-style that looked just right. But then I headed to Rwanda for two weeks and left the paperwork to my roommates. When I returned, I discovered that a number of reasonable factors had kept them from signing the lease. I understood, but I was still disappointed.

And then February happened. A thunderstorm and the sound of smashing glass one dark night let me know that not all was well on Ellenwood Drive.Read more

Two months ago, I talked with my dad on the phone for the first time.

No, we don't have some horribly strained relationship. And, no, he doesn't have some psychotic phone phobia. It's quite simple, really. He's deaf.

For me, having a hearing-impaired father is the same as having a dad who wears glasses or has red hair. It's part of what makes him him. Childhood illness (an unidentified fever of some sort) made my father the kid in school with the humongous hearing aids. In lieu of sending him off to a deaf school where he would join deaf culture and learn sign language, his parents opted to keep him in the hearing world. So, he had a relatively normal childhood, replete with music lessons and verbal sibling fights (in fact, he even once used his hearing aid battery as a weapon against his older brother).

By the time he headed off to college, he was fully acclimated to a world where he missed every fifth word, guessing his way through. He didn't know a lick of sign language, but he read lips like it was his job. Read more

From time to time, another scholar arrives on the scene claiming to have cracked the code to Lewis’ Narnia. Try these on for size. Narnia is an abbreviation of Spenser’s The Faerie Queen. No, it represents the seven Catholic sacraments. Or how about the seven deadly sins?

Others say that there is no coherent connectivity between the books. J.R.R. Tolkien, one of Lewis’ closest friends, claimed that Lewis must have been imaginatively confused while writing the series. In contrast to Tolkien’s intricately developed Lord of the Rings trilogy, Narnia seems like a mish-mash of folklore and Arthurian legend. In particular, many have criticized the appearance of Father Christmas in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as tacky.

Enter Cambridge scholar Michael Ward claiming to have found a key to a code, like everyone else.

I believe him. Read more