My favorite local coffee shop sells merchandise brandished with their amusing slogan: "Sleep is for the weak." After petroleum, coffee is the world's most traded commodity. My spouse tells me of one of his students who sleeps with headphones on that repeat all night long the terms she is trying...

I have a friend whose wife suffers from Alzheimer's. She doesn't even recognize him anymore, and, as you can imagine, the marriage has been rough. My friend has gotten bitter at God for allowing his wife to be in that condition, and now he's started seeing another woman. He says...

My friend Gary periodically performs what he calls "rhetorical surgery" on himself, excising from his vocabulary a word that feels drained of all meaning. (Two of his banished words are "church" and "nice.") Although I do not typically make New Year's resolutions, which usually feel too obligatory and...

After battling traffic, snaking parking lots and standing in lines to buy two-by-three-inch gift cards, my soul feels sapped. I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the stable-born savior. As abominable as the consumerist co-opting of Christmas is, I realize that the heart of my protest...

The Mississippi's bluffs, flood plains, and fertile fields -- the backdrop of my hometown -- testify to the beauty and power of the river's long life. The even older Colorado commands reverence with its dramatic handiwork, the Grand Canyon.

Like the aging of a river, human aging is a...

The morning my grandmother suffered her life-ending stroke, my grandfather, after trying to rouse his wife of 65 years, went outside and mowed the lawn. On the morning of her funeral, he refused to shower. A few days later, passing by her picture, he stated, "I haven't seen that woman...