What I Want My Teenage Daughters to Know about Sex
I disagree with many other Christians about sex. Firstly, I think God wants us to be happy and prosperous. He created us to enjoy the world and our existence in it. And sex is part of that existence. To turn a phrase, sex was made for man, not man for sex. Sex should be fun, […]
Take a Few Sensitive Hours
About halfway through the film Broken English: “What are you thinking?” Nora is laying her head back on Julian’s chest. The bath suds cover their nakedness. His arms intertwine with hers and wrap around her torso. He waits for a response, but she simply stares into space from behind blank eyes. “Hey.” He splashes some […]
A Walk through the Forest
Nothing like taking a hike with someone you love, during the first sunny days of Spring. And that’s what I and my Beloved did this past Monday. It was the first time we had visited Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsboro State Forest. But since we’ve moved to the Merrimack Valley, it’s now a 10 minute car ride down a […]
A Child of a Single Mom
(No post yesterday, because I was still on Easter vacation. So I thought now might be a good time to start sifting through the backlog of cool quotes I’ve been collecting.) We often perceive single-parent families as abnormal, dysfunctional, deficient, dirty, indecent, cursed, doomed to failure. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In […]
3 Best Things Being a Gentile in a Jewish Home at Passover
Tomorrow is a very special Sabbath, Shabbat Pesach. I spent almost two whole days this week wrestling over which songs to play in service. I probably overdid it, yes. As a result, however, this is my excuse for a Friday post this week. The three best things about being a Gentile living in a Jewish […]
It’s Not Sunday’s a-Comin’
Today is the first day of the omer. Actually, it began last night. Beginning with the second day of Passover, Jews begin counting the days. For 7 weeks they count, 49 days. This is called “Counting the Omer,” laid out in Leviticus 23:15-17. The omer was a measure of grain, an offering of thanksgiving for the […]
The Last Passover
“I have earnestly desired to eat this Pesach meal with you before I suffer.†Tonight begins the first night of Passover, of Pesach, the Jewish holiday of remembrance and living-out the Israelite escape from Egypt. It is a holiday of questions, of upheaval, of chaos, of suffering and deliverance. And for Christians, also the beginning […]
If Everyone Did This, the World Would Be a Happier Place
According to Jake Shimabukuro, “It’s the instrument of peace, because if everyone played the ukulele, this world would be a much happier place.” He said that at TED in February 2010, in the performance that kicks off today’s concert. And then he set out to prove it by playing Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the whole thing, […]
The Very First Wife Swap
(This is part 3 in my series on 1 Corinthians 5. Click here to read from the beginning.) Most of us probably imagine the first swingers as 1960’s hippies in a free-love commune. But in fact, it started earlier than that, in World War II. Christopher Ryan explains: It seems that the original modern American swingers were […]
Whatever the All-Merciful Does Is for Good
The Talmud tells this story (in Berachot 60b): Rabbi Akiva was once going along the road and he came to a certain town and looked for lodgings. But everywhere he went, he was refused. He sighed and said, “Whatever the All-Merciful does is for good.” So because he couldn’t find a place to stay in […]