Catch up on Season 13 episodes
If you attend a church that observes the liturgical calendar, this weekend you may have noticed the sanctuary decorated with flowers, clergy clad in pink vestments, and the organist may have been allowed her chance at that instrumental solo she has been longing to launch into. But why? Aren’t we observing Lent—a season for the…
As children most of us wrote to Santa Claus to ask for particular Christmas gifts. I’m not sure all of us asked our parents for the Jem doll, a 1980s version of Barbie except that her neck was extra thick to accommodate the double A batteries that made her ears light up. But we all…
We feel our smallness when we consider the universe, unutterably vast, dark, and scattered. Whole swaths of space are empty while elsewhere galaxies drift through the void for eons of time before colliding with each other. Some stars go nova and incinerate the planets orbiting them, expending themselves in an explosion so powerful that our…
When I was a little girl, my parents would bribe me with a dollar for every poem I memorized. It is disconcerting to see a child recite some of the sexier parts of Romeo and Juliet, but, what can I say, that was my idea of rebellion. My father, the history professor, was big on…
[Listen to a recording of today’s article by clicking play below.] It’s a day with a lot of names—Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Fastnacht—but around our house it was always Pancake Day. Though the Bowler girls were not brought up to be great observers of the church calendar, we always knew when it was…
My upbringing wasn’t exactly traditional, especially come December. My Dad is (if I may say so) the expert on Christmas. He received his Ph.D. in History from King’s College, London, and is the author of Christmas in the Crosshairs, Santa Claus: A Biography, and The World Encyclopedia of Christmas. He has published works on topics ranging from Renaissance…
Christmas is all about togetherness and no one understands that more than the Hallmark Channel. As everyone who is also tracking the Countdown to Christmas with the Hallmark Christmas app knows (please don’t tell anyone), nothing complicated is ever supposed to happen. In a movie that could be called “Christmas, Christmas Back Again,” travelers may…
Zach helped me light the first candle of Advent on Sunday. The Advent Wreath is a tradition created by a German pastor in the 19th century as a way to teach kids about the coming of Christ. Candles are lit on the Sundays of Advent; three are purple for penitence, a fourth is pink for joy,…
Hello my dears, As it turns out, sharing your innermost feelings with millions of strangers in the form of a fancy book was an even more inside-out-feeling than I imagined. Who knew? When we last spoke, I had just wrapped a busy book tour and recording seven podcast episodes where I had the chance to…
It’s happened a million and one times. I’m getting my nails done, picking up take-out, or making small talk in the line at the post office. Someone will ask where I work, and I’ll get to tell them about all the brilliant people I know at Duke, the students I love, and the church people…
I cleaned out my work office yesterday. I rearranged the futon, moved my desk to face the window, hung new artwork, and covered the ugliest cabinets with stick-on wallpaper. I’m one floral arrangement away from a Martha Stewart sponsorship. The hardest challenge was releasing stacks of library books I’ve nestled around me for the past…
A poor carpenter from Nazareth was put to death this week, died, was buried, and rose from the dead. Even though Christians do a lot of thinking and talking about tombs on Easter weekend, the story does not end there. It might be the most dramatic element – on the other side, nothing will be…
