Be Happy
It usually takes about five or six days. When one of my wife or I am traveling, this tends to be the threshold beyond which I start to feel strangely disoriented or […]
Author Archives: Ryan
Fight Song
I got into the car recently in a bit of a surly mood. A few things hadn’t gone as I had anticipated the previous day, I had received an unwelcome email […]
Lost and Found
Last summer, on a sticky, oppressively hot Wednesday afternoon in New York City, I lost my fourteen year-old son. My son isn’t easy to lose—he’s 6’5 and nearly 200 pounds—so […]
An Atheis… oops, Religious Response
Among the toughest questions I have been asked as a pastor is some variation of the following: Why is God allowing this to happen to me? The life situations that prompt […]
The plot we find ourselves in
It’s a strange thing that, as followers of Jesus, we are dwellers in a story. Religion is often conceived and described as ideology or a philosophy or an ethical system […]
All the Goodness in the World
We are bargain hunters, all of us. We make bargains with God, with reality or the cosmos or karma or whatever. We are convinced someone or something out there is keeping […]
Trading A Soul
Have you ever had the experience while reading of one sentence almost literally leaping off the page? Amidst all the little black marks on white pages arranged in neat little rows, one collection of markings […]
Where in the World is God?
It was a morning soaked in pain. Three stories, three conversations, three lives turned upside down and inside out. A death, a dying, and a falling apart. And through it […]
On Present and Future Selves
Unlike animals that live in the moment and merely cope with the world (however smoothly), we are… drawn out of our present selves toward some more skilled future self that […]
Pain Management
My daughter has lately been coming to terms with the horrors of World War 2. They’ve been studying this period of history in school, and she recently watched a movie […]
Wondering Fair 