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Letting Go of the List: Presence, Purpose, and the Christ-Shaped Life

Today’s post explores our list-making tendencies—and the deeper drive for accomplishment and control that often fuels them. As our entry point, I’ll turn to one of Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad stories: “A List.” It’s a gentle invitation to consider whether there might be better ways to spend our days and pursue our purpose. You…
August 5, 2026
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Diminishment

The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing. --Robert Frost, “The Oven Bird” Aging and diminishment are not synonymous. There are hundreds of books and essays about aging,…
August 4, 2026
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Preliminary Thoughts on Sport, Theology, and Trauma (Part 4): Concluding Remarks and Recommendations

One of our goals in this essay was to synthesise three related books on trauma, from three distinct sources—pastoral theology, the social scientific (and secular) study of sports, and biographical material. We hope to have provided a starting point for others to research the sports-­theology-­trauma relationship and to think about how to support athletes holistically…
July 31, 2026
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Preliminary Thoughts on Sport, Theology, and Trauma (Part 3): Theological and Psychological Perspectives on Trauma

Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, emerita professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of Spiritual Trauma Care: Theology and Psychology in Dialogue, is one of America’s leading pastoral theologians. Her latest book brings the latest trauma theory and empirical findings into conversation with Christian theology. Hunsinger states that the “overriding purpose of the book is to…
July 30, 2026
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Preliminary Thoughts on Sport, Theology, and Trauma (Part 2): Social-­Scientific and Methodological Perspectives on Researching Trauma in Sports

Our review of the literature yielded no publications specifically on a theological and psychological understanding of trauma in sports, aside from an interview with Rachael Denhollander and a book and two articles that touch on trauma-­related issues in sports from a Christian perspective (e.g., resilience and identity). There are several publications from the fields of…
July 29, 2026

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Blog

Unraveling and Hope

When the Moravian bishop and education reformer John Amos Comenius died in 1670, he was just a few chapters short of completing his 7-volume General Consultation on the Reform of Human Affairs (De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica). This ambitious work ranged across a vast array of topics including philosophy, theology, linguistics, education, politics, and…
July 12, 2021
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Reclaiming the Power of Words

Ellen Seidman is on a crusade. Her efforts have caught the attention of thousands of YouTube viewers, educators, 250,000 petition signers, and even past presidents such as President Obama. Her crusade doesn’t focus on ending poverty, racism, global warming, or sex trafficking. Her crusade is to end the use of a single word. Seidman and…
July 9, 2021
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Is Faith Required for Mathematics?

"Hey, I heard somewhere that you wrote a book about math and your faith. Having never understood how a rational person can possibly subscribe to the Christian dogma (except for having some strong, over-riding subconscious need, perhaps), I'm curious about it, although if it all comes down to ‘faith,’ well, I've never had any idea…
July 8, 2021
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Filling the Well When the Water Runs Dry

The lackluster Department of Labor April jobs report took just about everyone by surprise: the US economy showed a net increase of only 266,000 nonfarm jobs. With the country opening up after the winter’s lockdowns, some estimates projected that the total would be closer to a million new jobs.  Did this mean that the economy…
July 7, 2021
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Earth Has a Pulse, Scientists Say

If you follow the latest science news, whether it’s a newsfeed from Science Daily or a casual listen to Ira Flatow on Friday afternoons, you may have learned that Earth, indeed, has a pulse. As reported in the journal Geoscience Frontiers, rigorous statistical analysis for the timing of 89 major geological events of the past…
July 6, 2021
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Reading George Marsden with Gen Z

Each spring semester for the past twenty-odd years I have assigned the same essay to my junior-level history majors at the Christian college where I teach. In it historian George Marsden navigates the complex relationship between personal faith commitments and serious academic scholarship, laying out what I believe numbers among the most compelling visions for…
July 2, 2021
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Sanctuary

Professional art historians are among the luckiest of God’s children. Our vocations consist in the study and praise of beautiful things. If we are fortunate to have an academic job, we can use the summer months to travel and discover even more beauty - and count this useful, as well! So it was that I…
July 1, 2021
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Guest Post – Deconversion: The All-Or-Nothing Fallacy

It seems that not a month goes by without a well-known Christian announcing on social media that they have left the faith. More troubling, but less sensational is that for each celebrity deconversion there are hundreds of unknown believers who deconvert that don’t get the headlines. Deconversion from Christianity is a growing and troubling trend.…
June 30, 2021
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Guest Post: General Systems Theory for a Kinder, Gentler World

“Ship, Then Test” That phrase headlines a section from entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start, and engineers would call these fighting words.Guy Kawasaki, The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything (New York: Penguin Group, 2004) Yet many businesspeople would nod in agreement with the thought.In all fairness,…
June 29, 2021
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Theo-Drama and Mise-en-Scéne

In my current book project, The Wages of Cinema: Looking through the Lens of Dorothy L. Sayers, I argue that full appreciation for the relationship between Christianity and film necessitates knowledge about the history of theater: a word that comes from the Greek “to see.” Seeing the medium, whether on stage or screen, echoes one…
June 28, 2021