Mother Culture: A Reading Life after Kids
At this point in my life, I spend around two hours every day getting my children to sleep for bedtimes and naps. Yes, perhaps there is a quicker way to do it, but for good or ill I have chosen my path. I will refrain from calculating the amount of time I spend preparing meals, cleaning up meals, or completing laundry and the like, lest I grow resentful and let that lie creep in that my time is my own to do with what I please. I will...
Gospel Feasting
Quickly I lay out two small salad plates and two larger dinner plates from my set of sage-rimmed stoneware on the brown woven placemats. I have only a few minutes before the action begins; once my guests arrive, we will barely be able to keep wiggly bottoms in chairs and food on the plates for the brief moment it takes to bless it. I pull out a couple tealights and decide the tin box that holds the crayons will do for a candelabra. I...
Curating Children’s Media: Television in the Early Years
Talking about kids and screen time can immediately produce feelings of guilt or defensiveness for parents. Guilt, because we know how bad screens are for kids—especially when they take the place (as they always do) of more meaningful activities, like outside play, family time, or boredom. Defensiveness, because screens are very difficult to avoid and resist for our little ones; and everyone else is doing it! The discussion of limiting...
Wendell Berry on Specialization
There has been much talk of experts in the past two years—applauding them, cursing them, defending them, questioning them. It is tempting to form strong opinions based only on our current crises and today’s thought-leaders, but we always benefit from engaging with past thinking to inform our current situation. I would like to engage some thoughts from Wendell Berry’s 45-year-old work in order to gain wisdom on how to approach our...
A Chapter from the Book of Nature
Last spring, the trustees of my church decided the bushes in front of the parsonage we call home had overstayed their welcome. Over several days various men dug and tugged and clipped until the bushes were gone. In their wake was a sullen strip of dry dirt. It called to me like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. I knew it just needed a little love and it would be as good as new. Although I had a baby on the way and knew I would not have...
Recent Comments