This feels like a silly question to explore. It seems like, if one realizes one wants to begin a prayer practice, it would be obvious to know how to go about it. It turns out, if that one is me, that it’s not so obvious at all. I do not have a faith tradition to […]

When I heard Christopher Nolan was releasing a cinematic adaptation of The Odyssey this summer, I thought, oh yeah, I definitely want to see that. The Odyssey, along with the Iliad, is among our original stories, told orally nearly 3000 years ago, and the first of our written works in the West, about 600 years […]

We stopped in St. Louis on our way home from a family wedding this weekend and spent an overcast afternoon at the Missouri Botanical Garden. If you are into plants and ever find yourself in St. Louis, go. Go to the botanical garden. The beds burst with blooms and lush foliage. There are prairie beds, […]

I’m off work this week. It feels amazing to have time to myself that I don’t have to rush through, that I don’t have to be productive in. Each morning, I get up and blog. I check the writing prompt in my site’s dashboard, and it’s usually enough to get me going. I moved my […]

For whatever reason, reading as a pastime doesn’t seem to elicit side-eye or shame like playing video games or watching TV does. Reading is just as much of an escape from the real world as screens are, and as an avid reader, I often wonder, what am I trying to escape? I wonder if I […]

These past few weeks, as my job has ramped up, and my mind seems to constantly be on work — when I wake in the middle of the night, when I wake in the morning, as I walk, run, swim, eat — I’ve taken to sitting on a cushion on our bedroom floor for ten […]

When I think about the books and stories I appreciate most, the ones that really stick, plot is not typically the key feature. It has happened more than once that I’ve talked up a novel I love to someone, and they pick it up, get bored, and say, “Nothing happens in this book.” This is […]

It can be unnerving to write on the internet, to take what’s inside your mind, your heart, your deepest soul, and put it on the outside for other people to see. Possibly, the scariest part of writing publicly is the extent to which it makes you examine your own life and ask, “What’s interesting here?” […]

We’ve reached the time of year where we can open the windows to let the cool fresh morning in. We’ll need to close up mid-day when we start sweating; the air conditioner feels glorious when that happens. For now, I hear the whir of grasshoppers, the caw of crows, and the chirp of songbirds. When […]

Memory is a funny, fuzzy thing. Most of us can relate to not knowing if our first memories are our own or if they’re based on photographs we’ve seen or stories we’ve heard. Many untold, unphotographed memories are gauzy: I don’t recall specifics, like what year it was, or a teacher’s name, but I do […]