In her new paperback, “An Altar in the World,” bestselling author Barbara Brown Taylor writes: Popular religion focuses so hard on spiritual success that most of us do not know the first thing about the spiritual fruits of failure. When we fall ill, lose our jobs, wreck our marriages, or alienate our children, most of...

If I counted up all the minutes I’ve spent staring into a flame, I wonder how many years of my life that would be. Certainly more than the hours I’ve spent brushing my teeth or combing my hair. It would probably even surpass the combination of bath and shower time. For some reason (like most...

The 2012 American historical drama film “Lincoln”, directed and produced by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, has been nominated for seven Golden Globe Awards and twelve Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. The movie was meticulously done and succeeded in capturing Lincoln’s enigmatic, complex, and charming self. However, it wasn’t...

Of all my tools to combat depression and negativity, humor is by far the most fun. And just like mastering the craft of writing, I’m finding that the longer I practice laughing at life–and especially it’s frustrations–the better I become at it, and the more situations and conversations and complications I can place into that...

I spent my adolescence and teenage years obsessing about this question: Am I depressed or just deep?   When I was nine, I figured that I was a young Christian mystic because I related much more to the saints who lived centuries ago than to other nine-year-old girls who had crushes on boys. I couldn’t understand...