Writer, lay church leader, former felon. I write about redemption, masculine formation, and faith without pretending. Based in Tacoma with my wife Megan and our family.
Wildcard
I sat down to write my memoir this morning. I had coffee, I had silence, I had two full hours before the workday started. Everything was in place. Then the voice showed up. Not a voice like a crazy person hears. Or maybe exactly like a crazy person hears, who
Faith After Failure
A friend and I were talking the other day about how persecuted American Christians feel. We had a good laugh about it, which probably tells you something. The persecution we tend to mean, the offhand comment, the news story about someone getting side-eyed for their faith, is a long way
Faith After Failure
"You are afraid of surrender because you don't want to lose control. But you never had control; all you had was anxiety." Elizabeth Gilbert wrote that, and she's right. Most of the energy of a modern life goes into managing things. We arrange and
Redemption
Three hundred people were still working through the cake when my new father-in-law stood up, walked to the front of the Elks Temple, and picked up the microphone. He drove a truck for a living and was not a man who gave speeches, and he was holding a yellow legal
Faith After Failure
Ask the internet whether you should want to be rich and you'll get one answer, shouted from ten thousand directions. Of course you should!!! A whole economy of men in rented Lamborghinis has assembled to tell you so. Ask a certain kind of Christian and you'll
Masculine Formation
There you are, on the couch, three episodes into a show you don't even like, eating something engineered in a lab to go down easy in exactly this position. Same as last night. Same as the night before. On paper, you've got it good. You work
Faith After Failure
I watched a machine write in four seconds what I used to charge money for. It was a product description, the kind of small commercial writing I've done a thousand times. I typed in a few details and the screen filled with competent, faintly soulless copy. About as
Masculine Formation
There you are in the parking lot of a Target, watching a man in his forties lose his mind on his wife because she bought the wrong brand of paper towels. Full volume. Veins bulging in ways that veins aren't meant to expand. His kids are in the
Faith After Failure
This question has been rattling around in my head for years. When my church started a conversation about eldership and what it looks like, we dove right into the qualifications of an elder, and the "men only" part rubbed me the wrong way. Why only men? Shouldn'
Redemption
A friend unfollowed me on Twitter. This was back in 2011, which means it was original Twitter, the good Twitter, the Twitter where your follower count still felt like it mattered. And my friend, a woman I respected, had just removed herself from mine. Not the sort of thing a