I've spent the majority of my adult life struggling to breathe. No, that's not a metaphor. Since I was in middle school (possibly before that; I can't recall), I haven't been able to consistently take a deep breath—not without feeling an intense pressure in my chest that cuts off air at the top of each …
I'm no scientist, but I've been reading a lot of science lately. My reasons are threefold: I'm writing a science fiction manuscript that is in no small part influenced by the little I understand about cosmology + time + quantum physics; I now work in research communications for a state university, so it's my job to be …
Continue reading Three Lightning Rods: or, What the Universe Tells Me About God
I've adopted a new morning prayer. I wholeheartedly recommend it, despite the fact that (warning) it's terribly effective at sabotaging my ego throughout the day. It goes like this: Dear God, please prove me wrong about something today. I'm oh-so-tempted to leave out all the addendums that make that statement considerably less pious, like: "...but prove me right …
You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it. Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk As much as I'd like to pretend otherwise, I'm a person who thrives on …
I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be. This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in …
If my relative silence here (since December 2013, good Lord) didn't tip you off already, I guess it's time to admit: 2014 has been a doozy. In some respects, this has been the most challenging year Luke and I have spent in Colorado. It's also been, by a considerable margin, the most rewarding. I got a new job, diving headlong into the craziest six …
Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the Earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; …
We seem rather preoccupied with the end of the world lately. From The Hunger Games to The Walking Dead, the end of life as we know it has become commonplace in popular fiction. At least half of the new book releases in the young adult market for the past 5 years have featured a dystopian setting or …
One of my favorite modern parables is G.K. Chesterton's Tremendous Trifles. It's short and sweet – just over a thousand words – but it's become something of a touchstone for me in the years since I first read it. (It also kicks off an equally wonderful collection of essays published under the same title. Read them all: they're …
I write for a living – in two different ways. I'm a web content writer/editor for an Internet marketing firm, which means I output around 13,000+ words a week, translating into nearly a thousand pages/blogs/articles a year. In short: I write a lot. And most of the time, it feels good, because it's measurable work …
