Learning From A Not-So-Good Wife
Since becoming a bishop’s wife, I’ve been paying more attention to how other wives of other public figures – perhaps religious, perhaps not – conduct themselves, establish their identities, make their mark. Is there any perfect formula, I wonder, for mixing the need to be oneself, to find one’s own particular way to happiness, with the need to be a supportive spouse for a husband in the public eye? I don’t have the thing down yet, completely, but I … Read More
There’s More Than One Way to Hustle
“You really aren’t comfortable with moral ambiguity, are you?” This was the question my husband asked me shortly after we emerged, one evening last week, from seeing American Hustle. For some reason he thought I hadn’t liked the whole movie, when what I think I said was that I didn’t particularly warm up to any of the main characters, except for maybe Carmine Polito, who is open to taking money from an unknown Arab sheikh for the casinos because all … Read More
How Do You Make, How Do You Take Your Community?
Is there a sure-fire way to tell the real thing from an imitation? And what allows an imitation to be acceptable or even preferable? When it comes to fulfilling our natural desire for community, who is to say if one kind is more genuine or life-giving than another? Some months after advising me to lay off the salt, my doctor also told me to cut out sugar and all white foods—wait, I think cauliflower is allowed — as much as possible. … Read More
I Believe, Therefore I Do
On the heels of Christmas with its mix of sacredness and enchantment, I’m setting out to write something here about the act of believing in something and how closely it is, or perhaps is not, aligned with leading a good life. Of course just about any fool would say that the quality of anything flowing from a particular source must depend primarily on the legitimacy of the source – or set of beliefs – itself. I would maintain, however, that … Read More
Getting ready for Something, or perhaps for Nothing
Right now — with many of us running around trying to decide which particular thing would actually make a difference in someone’s life as opposed to just adding to a mountain of stuff really beside the point — seems like a good time to consider how far apart, or close together, nothing and something are. What we find here could come in handy. Opposites, you say? Not so fast. Sure, who could argue with Julie Andrews (or, just the … Read More
Bring the Family to the Adventure Park, and the Adventure Park to the Family
Been to an aerial forest park recently? Our family got to go to one last weekend, and the whole experience made me want to give thanks all over again. Swinging around on those harnesses was both refreshingly different from putting myself through the paces of daily life on the ground and also surprisingly similar to managing regular co-existence with a bunch of other individuals who happen to be my spouse and my children. Take the quality of balance, for instance. … Read More
Ball of Confusion? Bring It On
“You all should leave here feeling confused,” said one of my son’s professors during their semester in South Africa. Not what you would expect a representative of higher learning to say to students on a life-changing journey, but given what they had been absorbing at every turn about one side of an issue being just as compelling as another, they all understood what he meant. Listen to an advocate for wildlife preservation and then listen to a farmer struggling to … Read More
All the Fixins
Many people know my husband as a bishop, dealing with matters of the spirit, but I also know him as a guy who can, God willing, fix stuff around the house. Now obviously there’s a pretty big difference between what is sometimes known as “Soul Repair” –a divinity school in Texas has a whole center with that name– and the seemingly endless tasks that seem to amount to nothing but keep cropping up at home. I like to think that … Read More
Going Back to 1918 and Finding More Than the Last Big Red Sox Win at Home
It was windy out there a couple of days ago, matching my sense of being caught up in the sweep of history during these late October days. I’m in the here and now, absolutely, planning my day tomorrow like everybody else; but recent events have also had a way of casting me back, providing links with other times and even other continents. It feels a bit like being on a trapeze, arriving at those little platforms with relief, only to … Read More
Color Me Bored With Colorless Tasks
The colors have been beautiful these past weeks, and the many sunny days have really let them blaze. It’s only now that we’re seeing the beginning of the end of all that, giving us even more reason to be get outdoors whenever we can before November grey takes over. Maybe it’s the weather’s fault, but more and more I’ve been seeing life as kind of a divided business: the colorful, rich, invigorating part versus the part that consists of all … Read More