AUTHOR
How do you feel when you think about the holidays? I have such conflicted reactions. As you can tell, I'm already looking ahead. On the one hand, the holidays are supposed to be – and often are – a very special time of year when we pay extra attention to the important people and efforts... Continue Reading →
All Saints' Day gives us opportunities to grapple with the sometimes-complicated legacies of important figures in our lives. These people were not, after all, perfect. The person who inspired us may have also disappointed us. The figure who exemplified love may have also exhibited spectacular dysfunction. To reflect on sorting through these difficult legacies, I... Continue Reading →
The titles on my bookshelves don’t fully reveal what those shelves or their books actually hold. Because I have the habit of tucking notes into my books for safekeeping, I never quite know what will fall out when I open a book. Not a great organizational method for my correspondence, this tucking away of notes... Continue Reading →
What do you do that keeps you sane? In my first “Silly Things We Do” essay, I speculated that many of us have these things we do that would appear impractical and odd were it not for the good they do us. Funny how writing about that one habit of resting in winter sunshine has... Continue Reading →
Sometimes it helps to spend time with the difficult things in our lives using a grace-filled lens and a lot of imagination about what God might actually be redeeming even now.
Autumn makes me think of my grandmother’s pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies. She’d cover them in orange buttercream frosting and then decorate the tops with Jack-o’-lantern faces using a rich cocoa icing. I loved those cookies. My grandmother sold them for 35 cents apiece at the local pumpkin festival, and they sold out every year. My grandmother... Continue Reading →
Callie J. Smith 