by Guy Sayles | May 10, 2010 |
From years and years now of conversation and counseling and from my own experience as a son and a parent, I am convinced that very few of us live with any active regret about material things our parents could not or would not provide for us. Hardly anyone grieves the...
by Guy Sayles | May 3, 2010 |
One of the fine pleasures of a few days off (which I had last week) was, at last, having the time and space to savor Marilynne Robinson’s novel Home. Robinson’s two earlier novels, Housekeeping and Gilead (to which Home is intricately related), are among...
by Guy Sayles | Apr 21, 2010 |
At the heart of all genuine faith and all authentic change and conversion, whether sudden or gradual, dramatic or quiet, is humility. Spiritual growth and maturity require us to acknowledge that there are limits to our own strength, goodness, and knowledge. We need to...
by Guy Sayles | Apr 14, 2010 |
In his novella “Remembering,” Wendell Berry includes this moving poem/prayer that I often have in mind as I move to the pulpit or lectern to speak or pick up a pen or press my fingers to a keyboard to write: Heavenly Muse, Spirit who brooded on The world...
by Guy Sayles | Apr 5, 2010 |
Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple tells the story of Celie, a poor black woman whose husband, Albert, is violent and abusive. Albert isolated Celie from her family, censoring the mail so that she never heard from them. Celie’s sister, Nettie, a missionary in...
by Guy Sayles | Mar 29, 2010 |
You realize, don’t you?, how much ambivalence most of us have about leaders and leadership. Warren Bennis, for many years president of the University of Cincinnati and a noted expert on leadership, wrote a fine but troubling book a few years ago entitled Why Leaders...
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