I shouldn’t admit this, but my introduction to tweeting was the eighteen-day Egyptian revolution. Of course, I’d heard of Twitter, but had dismissed it as of no interest to me. Yet, as with so many of my disdainful preconceptions, experience forced me to change my view. As I surfed TV channels and internet news sites…

Memory makes it possible for us both to bless the past, even those parts of it that we have always felt cursed by, and also to be blessed by it. —Frederick Buechner Lately, I’ve been thinking about blessing, mostly due to Tony Woodlief’s beautiful blog post earlier this month. “I pay attention to how blessings…

Evil spirits. Mr. Hyde and Hannibal Lecter. Face-huggers and blood-suckers. Norman Bates and, yes, you guessed it—“heeeeeere’s Johnny” (Jack in The Shining). Many of the classic characters from the world of horror films are present and accounted for in The Arts and Faith Top 25 Horror Films, a list that is likely to prompt a variety…

“Read not the Times, read the eternities,” Thoreau advised. The 2011 Arts & Faith Top 100 Films, released shortly prior to the 83rd Academy Awards, won’t make the headlines of the Times—but if you prefer to scrutinize the eternities, you might want to skip the Oscars and check out the Arts & Faith Top 100.…

As I wrote last year, I know that a novel has me hooked when I start praying for the characters. And such it was again with my recent return to John Steinbeck’s classic novel of the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939. My husband and I listened to the CD of the…

Back when garage bands actually used to practice in garages, my local swimming pool sponsored Battle of the Bands nights. Sixteen-year-old boys with hair hanging down in their eyes used to flail away on their guitars, spurred on by visions of appearing on Shindig or American Bandstand, or, failing that, winning the adulation of a…

I have found it hard to do good. Oftentimes, I’m unsure of what the good would be, so cannot bring it about. Then at other times, I know what it is, but don’t want to do it especially. The best I can say is that, for the most part, I want to want what is…

When my husband and I moved from San Francisco to Salt Lake City, we told ourselves and our appalled friends that we’d give it two years. Two years to ascertain whether we could survive summer heat, winter snow, being inland, minimal sources of good Chinese food, and a total absence of Mission-style burritos. And what…

The other night, I got home from my writers’ group feeling jazzed. After struggling with a story revision, I’d decided to show them something different, twenty-five pages of new nonfiction. “I loved it,” they said, and “This is what you should be writing.” Comments and questions, too, but in general a big thumbs-up. I dropped…

On the day after Thanksgiving my dad would disappear into the attic while I waited at the foot of the ladder for him to bring them down. One by one, I wiped the dust from their crowns. We had the full set in faded plastic, melted in spots from summer storage in the Louisiana heat:…