Hell as a consequence imposed by God is hard to swallow and luckily, not true.  Men are the architects of hell, not God. Hell is not a designed condition, it is a byproduct of free will, an unavoidable consequence of moral disease. Hell doesn’t contain a single soul that loves CONTINUE >

One spring we stayed for a few weeks in Hoi An, Vietnam along the coast of the South China sea; it’s a teetering pile of old colonial buildings along canals and on the street level there are wonderful little folk art shops.

My son ate silk worms on the street, we CONTINUE >

The only thing I have that I want others to envy is freedom. Anyone, right now, can have the same freedom without fiscal cost or moral effort. Freedom is unearned and unearnable. I think, when I see peasants crowding into cities, “They are losing the only thing that matters.” In CONTINUE >

My next-door neighbor in our compound reconstructed a Banksy stencil and spraypainted it on the outside of his house. It’s of a guy dressed in terror garb hurling a bouquet of flowers. I trotted right over and borrowed that stencil and made a few copies for myself and my friends. CONTINUE >

The essence of folk art is its humanity. Folk art doesn’t have any pretenses; it’s sturdy, nearly sloppy, almost practical. Folk art isn’t above being likeable and is never in danger of being misunderstood. In a museum, fine art is regal and sublime; when I behold such things, I feel CONTINUE >

Whenever I pray, I’m trying to avoid catastrophe or to gain power over involuntary compulsions. My original belief, when I prayed as a child, was that prayer is an agent of change. My prayers have all been answered; but they have changed me rather than my circumstances.

A product of my CONTINUE >

My question was: How do you accommodate a catastrophic truth? That question drove me into my faith, and, from that foundation, into the life I now lead. I’ve been unbelievably lucky. Years ago, on August 19th, 2003, my husband and I went through a stage where we played the dice CONTINUE >