“One of the secrets and pleasures of cooking is to learn to correct something if it goes awry; and one of the lessons is to grin and bear it if it cannot be fixed.” -Julia Child Yesterday Julia Child turned 100. I owe her a lot. She taught millions how to cook, but […]
Forgiveness
Deliberate Mistakes
I once worked with a stone mason who was repairing a great fireplace, with the chimney stoned all the way from the mantle to the cathedral ceiling peak. He stood back and surveyed the stone work. “What makes this artwork, what makes it beautiful is not a bunch of same-size stones all perfectly lined up […]
The Cock Crows
At the heart of the “Greatest Story Ever Told” is a betrayal. No one would call their child Judas. The name is slimed with centuries of condemnation: the lily-livered turncoat who betrayed an innocent man for thirty pieces of silver. We might understand how the crowd could turn on Jesus, but how could someone from […]
The Prerequisite of Forgiveness
A king, visiting a prison, began to interview the inmates. Prisoner after prisoner insisted that he was innocent, that he had been framed, that a terrible injustice had been done. The King then asked the last prisoner, “And are you, too, as innocent as a lamb?” “No, your majesty. I am a thief. I was […]
The Only Sin
This is Ash Wednesday. If you darken the door of a church today—or even if you read the paper or the news online—you’ll hear about “sin.” That’s what Christians are repenting of today. Which is true, it’s just that there is a great big ironic problem which would be comic if it were not so […]
Every Parent Should be a Conservative and a Liberal
My father calls himself a conservative. In 1964 he voted for Barry Goldwater, and these days his car sports a big blue bumper sticker: CAIN. He is a born-again Christian who believes in the Bible and doesn’t believe in evolution. He’s a teetotaler. But I have to say, at nearly 93 my father is also […]