Practicing Solemn Joy
Welcome to my workshop, where I explore the meaning (and limits of) education, work, and fellowship–and the thread of solemn joy running through them all.
I believe the best theories ought to become best practices. Check out the blog, where I tinker with big ideas for meaningful living.
Get new blog posts!
You’ll be notified when I share new thoughts, and your information stays safe.
-
Madison Square Prophets
I’m just back from 17th century England, by way of downtown Savannah. What must it have been like for churchgoers in those turbulent times? After worshipping (or at least spectating) in Latin for one’s whole life, suddenly the priest is speaking the service in English, and so is everyone else. While it wasn’t time travel,
-
When play is work
Ugh, a part of me always replies, when invited to play a game. It doesn’t matter the age of the person, although depending on the complexity of the game and whether faces will need to be wiped, or lots of rules taught and reinforced, it may dial up or down the excitement. I’m beginning to
-
Mama is a chicken
It’s been ages since we had chickens, and spring has me considering… is it time for a return? The truth is, I’m chicken. I don’t know if I’m quite ready to resume responsibility for more living beings, even though chicken lives are cheap. It’s daunting. On the day I was gifted our first brood of
-
To number our days
My father recounts a sunny afternoon in grade school when he returned home breathless and tearful: a traveling, weeklong science fair had just begun at school. When my grandmother Sharon asked him what was wrong, he lamented that he couldn’t possibly attend all the workshops—there simply wouldn’t be enough time. He would have to make
-
When the world is hushed
Sometime during the summer of 2020, the girls and I were enjoying a juicy meta-conversation about our creatureliness (how we are like animals) after reading a few chapters of Gary Paulsen’s The Hatchet. I had been trying to develop a readaloud habit that I like for years, but it had felt like torture. I, the
-
Truth “balm”
The first time I stepped away from full-time work as a public school teacher and began to learn about other ways of schooling, it was messy. I “flipped my lid” in anger often, and was full of shame about it afterwards. On one of the worst days in memory, I actually said aloud that the
-
Christ the Worker
“I am who I am,” the Lord said to Moses at the burning bush, and in the Gospel of John, Jesus said, “before Abraham was, I AM,” to the crowd that would react so violently to this affirmation of His divine identity as to attempt to stone Him. Notice what He doesn’t say: “I am
-
Serenity Now!
This hilarious title of Seinfeld’s 159th episode hits me between the eyes, on days like today. In his garage office, Frank Costanza has pitted his own employee-son against a high school rival, to produce the ultimate telemarketing enterprise. As he revels in the chaos he’s created, Frank’s wife Estele grouses about the space his home
-
Everywhere an altar
I recently haunted a local memorial garden for bereaved families who have lost a child. I had been there before the loss of our oldest, while hiking with our three children, and found it meaningful. Now, I’m part of the place–a lovely, thoughtful spot overshadowed by trees, connected to a sunny wildflower meadow. Around a
-
Mourning: worth the work
Recently, our daughter Lorraine fell in love: with Middle English. “Where can I learn more of this? It’s amazing!” she exclaimed, after reading along with a recording of Genesis 1: “1 In the bigynnyng God made of nouyt heuene and erthe. 2 Forsothe the erthe was idel and voide, and derknessis weren on the face