Retail evangelist: What I learned selling shoes
One year when I was between interim gigs I got a job at Macy's. My training there wasn't unlike church outreach training.
The cruelest month: December losses
On a nasty night, Christmas Eve 1965, members of my family walked into my father’s hospital room....
Brainstorm: Finding hope with William Styron
In 1992 I had a clinical depression. It was a long time in coming, but in hindsight it was inevitable. I was hunkered down in my study trying to write a sermon on the atonement. Behind the stormy sky in my mind, I saw not a smiling Providence offering a gesture of boundless love in sharing his son Jesus, but a scowling ogre, an angry, petulant father. Whether this torment was a function of the descending depression or a contribution to it, I cannot say, but I called my wife and said, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m coming unglued.”
Designing the city: Reflections on the New Urbanism
In the spring of 1976, I took my New Hampshire youth group to Philadelphia for the bicentennial celebrations....