My Burnside Writers Essays

Toward the end of Donald Miller's "Blue Like Jazz", the author mentions Burnside Writers Collective, a website he created with friends, in order to create a web presence for aspiring young Christian writers who tend to be a little Left of Center.

While I am neither young nor left of center, I have been privileged to have some of my writing published at BWC. Here's a list:

How God Will Use Unimpressive People

The Tenth Anniversary of 9/11

Book Review: Billy Coffey's "When Mockingbirds Sing"

God Expresses His Love For Me and Offers to Heal the Wounds of Fatherlessness

Why I Voted For Mitt Romney

The Value Of the Hurts In Our Lives

My Disagreement with Springsteen's "Glory Days"

A Lesson I Learned From Little League

In addition to those, I have participated in Cross Talk, a series of discussions in which Emily Timbol (Reaves) and I have talked out our disagreements on important theological/political topics:

When Is It OK To Use the Word "Homophobia"?

The Obama-Romney Town Hall Debate

President Obama's Use of Executive Orders: Did He Overstep His Bounds?

Let's Talk About Sex, and Abstinence-Based Sermons

Freedom of Religion and Government-Mandated Birth Control

Comments

Saying goodbye to one set of twins, and hello to another

"It's been ten whole years already? Wow! Hard to believe." Many a father will say something like that while shaking his head in disbelief, when his oldest approaches the 10th birthday. It's a milestone, not just for the kid, but for the parents. It's a head-shaker because I am reminded that on that day, 10 years ago, my life changed forever. In some ways, it has passed very quickly. In other ways, it seems like it's been every bit of ten years. There are two distinct things, though, about the ten-year anniversary of my dadhood. The first is that I became a father of not one, but two little bundles of joy that Tuesday morning. Abby was born at 8:48, followed by her brother Jacob at 8:50. The second is that their birth marked some rare joy in the midst of the darkest day in our nation's history. As my wife was in labor, a nurse came in and told us that an airplane had crashed into a skyscraper in New York. I turned on the labor room...

Embarrassing video clip--John Cougar

I recently stumbled across some Youtube gold: a live performance by John Mellencamp when he was Johnny Cougar. He appears to be have been about 23, and he's singing "Ain't even Done With The Night", in front of a fairly unresponsive crowd with Bobby Bare (?!) in the front seat. Cougar/Mellencamp is dressed in a nerdy sweater and generally bears no resemblance to the singer as we knew him just 5 years later. He looks a lot more like Potsie from Happy Days than the guy who sang "Pink Houses". Certainly, there is no way to watch this and make a connection to the guy whose song "This is Our Country" beat us to death by overuse in pickup truck commercials. But the real entertainment value from this clip comes from the guys behind Cougar. In hot-pink tuxedos, there are 5 Pips-like backup dancers/singers who don't sing, but clap their hands real well. They essentially spend the entire song performing cheerleader dance routines not unlike those ...

The Two Christmases

As I walked through the front door of the Post Office to make my stamp purchase, I was faced with a choice. On my left was a vending machine, and to my right was the customer service desk, where I could make the purchase from actual human beings. Because there was no line at the moment, I chose the human interaction. I strolled up to the middle-aged, slightly balding postal employee, read that his name was "Rex", and I asked for two books of stamps. As it was mid-December, Rex asked me "would you like Christmas stamps, or...". Once I realized he wasn't about to complete the sentence, I looked down and saw that he was holding some very un-Christmas-like stamps bearing images of the Liberty Bell and the word "Forever." Knowing that my wife had planned to mail several Christmas cards, I told him "One of each." To my surprise, the decision-making did not stop there. Rex hit me with a follow-up: he held up two types of stamps: one had a pi...

Middletree

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