Tuesday, 31 August 2010 14:47 Written by Cheri Saccone

I’m the first to admit that I love a good fast food meal. Am I allowed to call it a meal? Not sure, but I digress. I had a pretty good run for a while when I completely abstained from fast food and even found it to be distasteful. Ahh, those were the good old days, when I was a fast food snob (and 10 pounds skinnier). But life threw me a couple curve balls (a.k.a, a couple of kids) and everything changed. I no longer had time to cook healthy meals and eventually found any substantive food to be distasteful. It all flipped on me. I blame the evil franchises that make salty greasy food way too accessible and addictive. It’s not fair—who could withstand the constant temptation?

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Friday, 20 August 2010 15:35 Written by Larissa Peters

I left graduate school believing that very soon I would have a job, career, ministry … something that I would feel fulfilled in and gain experience from. I didn’t feel the need to pay attention to a conversation I had with my grandfather driving home cross-country back to Oregon. We were talking about knowing what one is supposed to do with one’s life, and I asked him, “How do I know that it is exactly where I should be at?”

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Wednesday, 18 August 2010 14:07 Written by Wendy Harbottle

Grief is a mysterious thing. You never know when it is going to creep up on you or whether you’ll laugh or cry when it does. A few years ago, my brother’s best friend Stephen died. He was tall and dark and funny. I thought I saw him the other day, standing by a broken-down car. I came around a corner and I saw Stephen. I started to smile. Then I realized it couldn’t be Stephen, because he was dead. I burst into tears, while I gripped the steering wheel, and let grief come.

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Tuesday, 10 August 2010 15:31 Written by Jonathan Keck

I often carry around a box. A box that contains nothing, though for years I believed it held everything.

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Friday, 30 July 2010 14:48 Written by Joe Cassara

Our columnist wonders why God demands our compassion—even when it doesn't change the world all that much

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Tuesday, 27 July 2010 13:31 Written by Teshelle Combs

During my junior year of college, I did something ugly.

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Wednesday, 21 July 2010 14:06 Written by Mark Zimmerman

As a teenager I heard a line from one of Jack Kerouac’s poems that really impacted me. In his book Mexico City Blues he writes, “I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel and safe in heaven dead.”

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Monday, 12 July 2010 14:17 Written by Karissa Sechrist

We're all trying to find it—it being that thing called love. Love. The English language only has one word for it. Ancient Greek has four, Italian has five, Arabic has more than a dozen.

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Wednesday, 07 July 2010 13:23 Written by Andrew Wilkes

Our sins are hidden in our sanitation. Last week on the New York subway, I read a fascinating article about the connection between sanitation and self-deception. Brayden Simms, a columnist for the Metro, is writing a series on waste management to raise consciousness about how environmental issues affect our daily lives. The truth about our garbage, according to scientists at the University of Arizona, is that we lie to ourselves about what we consume. The article notes that “most people … claimed to drink 40 percent to 60 percent less alcohol than garbage sorters discovered.” After knocking back a bottle of Jack Daniels, it seems, we throw away the bottle—and our memory of drinking it. Dr. William Rathje, an emeritus professor at the University of Arizona and the focus of Simms’ article, published his research in a colorful book entitled Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage. Simms’s article extracts a spiritually troubling implication of Rathje’s work: We engage in self-deception and denial about our consumption patterns. Consider, for instance, a couple of Dr. William Rathje’s conclusions:

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Monday, 28 June 2010 15:26 Written by Andrew Schwab

I’m not going to lie. I was a serious force in little league baseball in fourth grade. In my first year, I made the all-star team and had the best batting average on my team. And when the season concluded (with a decent all-star game performance, I might add), I was poised—in my own mind, at least—for a serious run at a major league career.

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