Today was a milestone in cottage building, the last wall finished and erected.

Maybe most people didn’t notice, but a couple of weeks ago I said I was starting a (written) series on magical thinking vs thinking magically. I assume that most people who still come here are not interested in my ponderings, but started coming here when I was in a health crisis four years ago and…

We (and I must say “we”) just finished one of the most terrifyingparts of building this cottage, raising the most difficult, north gable wall. This wall raising was complicated by the fact there was a 10 foot drop-off right outside the wall, a hill sloping down to a wooded ditch. Therefore, there was no easy…

Sorry about so many posts. But I had positive things to share. I awaken at 2 AM this morning. I checked my phone and there was an automatically generated text message that my cancer labs were in. With hesitation, I got up to check them. With so much at stake, it can be nerve racking…

I am home from Iceland, in body at least. The last forty-eight hours were intense. First a 150 mile drive through Iceland’s western fjords, dogging a plethora of raindrops and sheep (who roam freely along the busy, zooming highways), but enjoying the emerald hills, waterfalls, and mountains. Then turning in my Land Rover Defender (driving…

Sadness is gripping my heart this morning. But it is an ordinary sadness that all readers will be familiar. For today, the second chunk of my family departs this intriguing land of water, fire, and ice, heading back across the Atlantic to our homes in the Pacific northwest, another land of ice, water, and fire.…

I am writing this from Reykjavik. If I had found a way to be successful as a writer, (financially) I would do all my writing here. There is something magical about the Icelandic culture that inspires the imagination. There is something very unpretentious about its people. We are renting a movie director’s house, I think…

Fore note: This written blog is a cousin to a podcast I did about “The Stiff Upper Lip,” so if you are one of the people who listened to that, there will be some redundancy here. Culture is inescapable. It probably serves a positive role in making the way we think and act robotic, so…

To segway from my previous post and pod cast, I want to focus on one aspect of American Christian mischief, one of a thousand cuts that has led to the irrevocable demise of American cultural Christianity. After that, I want to leave this topic of religion before someone accuses me of having an agenda. But…

 It is inevitable that we are entering a post-Christian world. Europe entered this phase 75 years ago and now it is America’s turn. For the first time (2020), less than 50% of Americans are church members. When you do visit a church, it is an ocean of gray or bald heads. When you divide it…