Phone booths have all but vanished from the American landscape, to the delight of the myriad faceless number crunchers who toil at Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. It's bad enough that the extinction of the public telephone has created so much hardship for cellphoneless citizens like myself, ... Continue reading
A heart like His
June 7, 2012 By 1 Comment
Even if you've never darkened the door of a Sunday school class in your life, you will have grown up with a culturally-formed understanding of the biblical allusion to David and Goliath; every kid with a slingshot in his back pocket is confident he can slay any foe. In sports, politics, or whenever ... Continue reading
Anything: Yielding to an unsafe God
April 18, 2012 By 2 Comments
"Then Aslan isn't safe?" asked Lucy."Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." — The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis What might happen if I put my career, my ... Continue reading
Brake repair Odyssey
March 26, 2012 By 1 Comment
You will find a fortune, though it will not be the one you seek. But first... you must travel a long and difficult road, a road fraught with peril. ... And, oh, so many startlements. I cannot tell you how long this road shall be, but fear not the obstacles in your path, for fate has vouchsafed your ... Continue reading
Going all in
October 27, 2011 By 3 Comments
If you fly with any regularity, even if you aren't a pilot, you know the routines that every flight follows. The plane is pushed out from the gate. The pilots start the engines. The aircraft lumbers slowly down the taxiway behind a long line of other flights, all waiting their turn on the main ... Continue reading
Faith, physics and the Higgs boson
September 4, 2011 By 3 Comments
Physicists love carnage. At Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator, they are smashing streams of protons into each other at terrifying velocities and using powerful computers to examine the wreckage. It's a bit like filming the collision of two logging ... Continue reading
A free man in Paris
August 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I was a free man in Paris; I felt unfettered and alive. There was nobody calling me up for favors and no one's future to decide. You know I'd go back there tomorrow but for the work I've taken on, stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song. — Free Man in Paris, Joni Mitchell, ... Continue reading
Broken cisterns
August 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
My people have committed a compound sin: they've walked out on me, the fountain of fresh flowing waters, and then dug cisterns — cisterns that leak, cisterns that are no better than sieves. — Jeremiah 2:13, The MessageThe hills and valleys of southern Mexico had turned the color of café con ... Continue reading
