It was not a pleasant scene.

I was chatting with two wonderful friends, Parker and Meg at their house when we were joined by two surprise guests—Mark and Abigail—who showed up to announce big news.

They were pregnant.

Pregnant with their first. Just had the ultrasound—healthy as a horse. And, wouldn’t you know, his employer was giving them a house so that there’d be enough room for Junior to run around, and their parents were just thrilled and oh, isn’t God good?

That question got asked a lot. Isn’t God good? It got asked until Meg politely excused herself. (more…)

I’ve situated my bed just by a window on the ground floor level of my apartment building, one thatched screen away from the world at large. In the morning, I wake to the croaking strains of a day trying to get off the ground, like an old pilot spinning the propeller on his plane. It’s a little creaky but, by God, it does get going. I hear birds, of course. An old tomcat who’s taken up residence under the mailboxes. Sometimes a train. Often, the beginning of my neighbor’s commute. Her name is Megan and she parks her car just outside my window. She generally leaves before I get up, and I hear her keys jingle.

I hear all this, but I can’t see it well. I have dreadful vision, and take in the world blurry and smeared until I put my glasses on.

Strange to say, but my only concrete idea of Heaven is this: a place where I won’t need my glasses. Hopefully, that is the least of its charms, but it’s one I can, at least, grasp. The idea amuses me. Everyone else in Heaven, splashing in the river of life; soaring over the celestial mountains; bounding, block by block, down streets of gold. And I’m just grateful I don’t have to squint to read any of Heaven’s street signs.

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A friend, a new Christian, once asked me what happened to Jesus after he was resurrected from the dead. I started to explain, best I could.

“Well, he hung out with friends—appeared here and there, did a few miracles—and then, one day, he sort of, well, the Bible says that he…flew away? Up in the sky? To Heaven?”

I stumbled through this story with the confidence of a third-grader delivering his first oral report, realizing as I told the story how very stupid I sounded. Try as I might, in my mind’s eye, Jesus’ ascension to heaven can’t look anything but silly.

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“Everything will work out.”

Is that so.

I’m sitting in my bedroom, putting some finishing touches on a few different pieces I’ve been writing, and the advice of others is rattling in my brain like a loose screw in a metal box.

“God has the perfect person for you.”

“One day, you’ll look back on this and be grateful.”

“Just give it time.”

I’ve noticed this trait lately, in myself and others: when other words fail, we do ourselves and God a disservice by taking on his role of divine healer, offering nice-sounding promises that he never made.

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We were driving down I-29 and Erin was explaining to me why she didn’t consider herself a Christian anymore.

“It’s the whole ‘it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship’ thing.” she said. “I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Some background about Erin. She was one of those youth group girls. Youth pastors love them—they’re a sign that they’re doing something right. She went on mission trips. Led Bible Studies. Summer camp counselor. Christian fish tattoo. You know the type. Maybe you are the type. Anyhow.

I was confused. “The relationship bit is a pretty big selling point for Christianity,” and I couldn’t have put that worse. (more…)

Most scientists are convinced that exactly four species in the animal kingdom have the ability to feel happiness: elephants, primates, dolphins and, of course, us. The debate around the rest of the animal kingdom and their own capacity for emotion is a hot one, but the case is closed on those four.

* * *

A good friend told me once that he had a wicked heart. “If you only knew,” he said, holding his thumb and forefinger scarcely an inch apart, “how miserable and small and black my heart was…” and he trailed off, unable to finish. There were tears in his eyes and he said it, his voice cracking. We were at a church. This sort of confession was something that had been pried from him by our pastor. It’s what we were all supposed to be doing; acknowledging our own wickedness in front of each other. It would, we were told, be a release. “I’m so miserable!” my friend said. “So miserable!”

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Last week I locked my keys in my house. A stupid mistake. I was listening to the White Stripes, stepped outside for a moment, twisted the lock on my door out of habit and knew themoment I shut the door that I was supremely screwed. My keys were in plain sight through the window, behind my reflection, which seemed to be rolling its eyes at me. There was very nearly nothing to be done. I tried every window. I toyed with the lock. I racked my brain. I Googled “What to do when you lock your keys in your apartment,” and while I was not expecting a spell that would unlock my door, I was surprised at how much advice it turned up, and how utterly worthless it all was. “Pretend you’re a thief. How would you break into your house?”  (more…)

When I eighteen years old, I was settling a hotel bill with an old man with a Russian accent as thick and rich as whiskey. “I married young,” he told me, suddenly. “And we were very poor.” 

He didn’t look at me as he said this, but as there was no one else there, I stayed to listen. “We worked very hard during the week, but on the weekends.” Here he looked at me, a delighted smile on his face. “On the weekends, we danced. And now you are young, so work hard during the week. And on the weekends, dance.”

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Convention has it that church is boring, and that is, in my experience, very true. There is a story about how Thoreau, shackled by duty, was sitting at a Christmas church service one fine, flurried Sunday morning. The sermon was droning on in the way of sermons (I suspect little has changed since 1775) and Thoreau’s naturalist heart drove his attention out the window, to where snow was falling in the eastern brightness of dawn. There was something in the snowflakes, some serene transcendence they set on him, that struck him as far lovelier and more captivating than the Christmas sermon. And so he took his leave of that church, never to return to it or any other.

Such is the prerogative of a transcendentalist, but I do wonder whether his life on Walden Pond was so much more thrilling than any given Sunday morning at church. I understand the aesthetic appeal of his adventures—who doesn’t—but be your Sunday morning sanctuary an auditorium or an autumn wood, I expect it’s stupendously dull, pockmarked with brief moments of beauty that will break your heart.

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