With the Coming of Age Celebration this Sunday, I’ve been thinking a lot about the topic of transitions and change. One of the things that has been bouncing around my brain is an NPR article that came out late last year about how the pandemic may have shifted our personalities on a population-wide scale. I don’t think this is surprising to anyone. We’ve all been through a lot.
But it was interesting to have some data to back up the anecdotes and general feelings that...
It’s a snow day for Columbus City Schools and, as far as I can tell, just about every K-12 school around Central Ohio. This is not particularly convenient for parents and guardians who suddenly need to account for their children throughout the day, and do their regular job.
And yet…Maybe I’m alone in this, but I still feel a distinct thrill on snow days. It could be nostalgia for childhood, but I wonder if it’s something more.
Snow days are a reminder, amidst our over-programmed lives, that we can, if we deem it necessary, simply stop. We can cancel activity for the day...
For this week of honoring the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther Kings Jr, I share words from Rosemarie Freeney Harding from her memoir Remnants. Rosemarie and her husband Vincent were close companions of the Kings and involved, for a time, in the racially integrated “Mennonite House” in Atlanta.
“Martin and Coretta and Anne Braden and Ella Baker and others like them had a beautiful effect on people who spent time with them. Living and working in their presence hastened changes in your own thoughts, your reactions, your priorities; even if you weren’t cognizant of...
Last Saturday I was doing some house cleaning while listening to a podcast, the most recent episode of NPR’s “Planet Money.” I was intrigued with the title: “The economics lessons in kids’ books.” I was even more intrigued when the episode centered on an elementary classroom “in the Columbus, Ohio suburbs,” which turned out to be Shale Meadows Elementary School in Olentangy Local School District. No personal connections I know of (although probably some I don’t know of), but cool that a national podcast...
I recently read an article about what it means to seek wisdom and was reflecting on how one of my favorite ways to think about this thing we call Christianity is as a “wisdom tradition.” As the article suggests, wisdom can be hard to pin down or define, but it always goes beyond just a collection of facts or ideas. As a “wisdom tradition” Christianity is less about the...