Since I can’t write about courage without occasionally mentioning something I’ve done: I’ve entered my novel, A Square Foot of Calfskin, in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. It’s a contest for unpublished or self-published books, and it might just help me get some eyes on my work. Judging for the first round just started, […]
Move out or grow in any dimension and pain as well as joy will be your reward. – M. Scott Peck, M.D., from The Road Less Traveled I was listening to this book on the way home from work this evening, and this quote leaped out at me. This line captures the essence of […]
Uganda’s New Anti-Gay Law: Part of a Broader Trend in Africa. We are so afraid of those who are different from ourselves that we feel the need to outlaw their behavior. A useful stance if we’re protecting children from molestation, or keeping intoxicants out of the hands of people who might hurt others under their […]
Todd Henry is a self-professed “arms dealer for the creative revolution.” The author of two books and a nationally-known speaker and consultant, Todd is enabling thousands of people to claim the lives they want by embracing their creative efforts. In the information age, creativity, whether it’s art or young minds or computer code or delicious […]
Most folks don’t normally think of the Pope as a hero. To Catholics, he’s a leader, spiritual guide, giver of laws. To non-Catholics, he’s a role model, maybe. In some unfortunate cases, he’s a misguided–or even malicious–purveyor of hatred and intolerance. To many, he’s irrelevant, just an old guy in a funny hat. But a […]
This Research Proves Your Brain Just Wasn’t Built for Junk Food, Porn, or the Internet. It’s a long article. Bring popcorn. But it’s worth a read. Greg Ciotti doesn’t argue that we shouldn’t engage in any of these things–just that we should be aware of how they affect our brains, so we can make choices […]
In October of 2012, a gunman sent by the Taliban–that fun-loving bunch of crazy kids that sheltered Osama Bin Laden so he could share his brand of joy with the world– stepped onto a school bus in Pakistan and shot a fifteen-year-old girl in the head. It wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t random. It […]
Veronica Roth is the author of Divergent, the first book of a teen trilogy about a dystopian future society. In the story, society is divided into factions, each based on values its founders felt could counteract the evils of the world. Those with aptitudes encompassing more than one faction–the Divergent of the title–are seen as […]
A few days ago, we talked about looking back. Of course, life can’t be all about what came before; if we’re not looking forward, it’s hard to get anywhere, and harder to know where we’re going. We wouldn’t take a road trip without an idea where we’re going. Why, then, do so many of us […]
If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a big fan of the late Nelson Mandela. It wasn’t always so. The day he was released from prison in 1990, I watched his speech on CNN. I was eighteen years old, and fancied myself a patriot, and five minutes in I decided he was a […]