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Debra Rienstra

memoir

“Danger: You Could Die Here in Paradise”

I know that important things have been happening in the news this week, but I don’t care because: I’m in Hawaii. Been here for almost two weeks with my wonderful partner, Ron, celebrating 25 years of marriage. We are giving ourselves a much-needed and extravagant…
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June 29, 2013
Pious Petunia

Pious Petunia Celebrates Summer

Dear Miss Petunia: My husband and I bicker every summer about his preference for golf over worship services on sunny Sunday mornings. “I worship God so much better on the golf course!” he claims. I think he’s just being lazy about the spiritual life. Either…
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June 1, 2013
memoirspirituality

Unfinished Business

I suppose I have simply gotten used to unfinished business. As more academic years slide past and pile up behind me, I have less a sense of closure in May than a sense of constant motion. Even this year, when two of my own children…
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May 18, 2013
cultural commentary

Quintessence of Dust

Last night, thanks to the cleverness and curiosity of internet geeks, my husband and I were able to listen for about three hours to Boston police scanners—live-streamed over the internet—during the operation that captured the Boston bombing suspect. We knew, before it was broadcast on…
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April 20, 2013
liturgical year

The Problem with Palms

Let’s admit it: Palm Sunday is a problem. I know I shouldn’t be questioning a moment in the church calendar that goes all the way back to the third or fourth century, but why do I always vaguely dread this day?
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March 23, 2013
liturgical yearmemoirUncategorized

February Blahs

If for some reason you wish to study that peculiar state of human existence called “the blahs,” I suggest you begin in the third week of February in Michigan. It’s been winter for as long as we can remember here, and we still have a…
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February 23, 2013
liturgical yearspirituality

Thin Places

The Transfiguration story speaks to that part of us that longs for the mountain-top experience—for the epiphanic moment when, even for an instant, we perceive through the veil of clay to the numinous glory beyond. If only we could find a thin place, maybe we…
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February 9, 2013