Then forgive that much and then some.

Every morning, I say The Lord’s Prayer (Gospel of Matthew 6.9-13) with my son.

I’ve started to play around with it the way a musician might improvise when playing an old hit before a live audience. Changing things like the emphasis on certain words or the rhythm of my speech reveals little surprises.

Here’s one example:

“Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors” (verse 12).

One day I flipped it:

“As we forgive our debtors, forgive our debts.”

Oh.

I think the latter version is what Jesus meant. That is, let us receive mercy in proportion to the mercy that we give to those who need it from us.

In the classic recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, the emphasis is on God forgiving us followed by a mumbled “as we have forgiven” dragging along behind. Almost as if to say: “God, when we feel sufficiently forgiven, we’ll go do some forgiving, too.”

I’ve had a few weeks to think about the Electoral College.

My candidate for U.S. President, Hillary Clinton, won the nationwide popular election by almost 3 million votes. Donald Trump, however, won the Electoral College.

According to the U.S. Constitution, that makes Trump the winner.

This is the second time in my lifetime that a candidate won the popular vote and lost the election. Like Hillary Clinton, Al Gore won the nationwide popular vote in 2000, but lost the Electoral College to George W. Bush.

Out of the five presidential elections in the 21st century, the Electoral College gave the popular vote loser the White House in two of them.

No wonder people say the Electoral College is a threat to democracy.

I choose to look at it this way: The Electoral College would be a threat if democracy was the primary aim of the United States.

It is not.

The primary aim of the...

The best way to oppose the opposition is to not oppose them at all.

I don’t want what defines me to be about what I’m against; I want my life to be for something. When I choose to become an opponent, I choose to react to someone else’s agenda. I’m no longer behaving, feeling, and thinking on my own terms; I’m behaving, feeling, and thinking on someone else’s terms.

Here are three rules I suggest we all follow starting now:

1. If we are in the habit of reading the news every day and forming opinions, let’s challenge our own thinking. Ask yourself the questions you hope nobody else ever asks you. The ones you’d rather avoid. Debate with yourself. List your assumptions. Scrutinize your sources. Try to argue with yourself from the opposite point of view. The point of this exercise is to try to figure out what you believe, but to do it in such a way that helps you empathize and identify...

I grew up watching movies and the news that convinced me that Russians were brutes and villains.

I didn’t know any Russians. It didn’t occur to me that I could know any Russians any more than I could know Dolph Lundgren.

When I moved to Chicago as an adult, three Russians became my best friends. We spent hundreds of hours together camping, eating, and watching movies. We laughed about the 1980s movies we watched in our own countries and what those movies made us believe about each other.

None of it turned out to be true.

What did turn out to be true is that we were a lot alike.

Once we got to know each other, we really liked each other.

Since then, I’ve never thought of any people in the world as my enemies. Especially now that I’m a dad. I know that Russian dads feel the same way about their sons as I feel about mine. I know they want the same things for their boys that I...

It’s easy to be nice to people. It’s hard to be intimate with them.

It’s easy to read data on demographics. It’s hard to get to know someone who is different from me.

It’s easy to go to church once or twice a week. It’s hard to be the church every minute of every day.

It’s easy to volunteer once in awhile. It’s hard to let people help me in my deepest need.

It’s easy to make a prayer list. It’s hard to actually pray.

It’s easy to watch TV. It’s hard to make a great life story.

It’s easy to talk about politics. It’s hard to be an engaged citizen.

It’s easy to talk about religion. It’s hard to be a practitioner of faith.

It’s easy to watch porn. It’s hard to make love with a real human being.

It’s easy to watch a Hallmark movie (same as porn). It’s hard to be in a relationship through the difficulties of real life.

It’s easy to state an opinion before our friends on...

Last night, I dreamt that two strangers asked me how my nose got so crooked and misshapen.

“I don’t exactly know,” I said. “I got hit a couple of times and I sleep on the right side of my face. I have a perforated septum. I guess that’s just what happens to a nose after 41 years.”

As I began to wake from the dream, I felt a little sad for my nose that will never be straight again.

In the darkness before sunrise on my 41st birthday, I lingered on that feeling. As my body rested on the mattress and pillow beneath me, I allowed the full weight of my heart to sink into the sadness.

Why do I feel sad on my 41st birthday?

The answer came: Not sadness. Gratitude.

Have you ever felt so thankful that you couldn’t hold back tears?

I was born with my nose, I didn’t have to figure out how to build it for myself. I didn’t have to teach my nose how to be a nose. I didn’t have to teach it...

The sign says “Old Country Store,” but I know it’s actually a Fortune 1000 company with $2.91 billion in annual revenue and a current NYSE share price of $171.70.

Most of Cracker Barrel’s 639 stores are not old (they were built in the last 20 years). They are in the country if you consider “country” the concrete meadow between the Days Inn and Flying J.

As any illusionist will tell you: If you want to believe Cracker Barrel is an old country store, neither facts nor reason will convince you otherwise.

Belief is so powerful it alters reality. It makes its own truth that no number of facts can dislodge or even penetrate.

Marketers know this. So do politicians. And preachers.

Our economy, our politics, and our religion in the West stand on the foundation of belief. What do people (customers, voters, religious adherents, etc.) believe is true? How can that belief be manipulated to...

In the winter of 2015, the child we were expecting–he or she would have been our second–died in the womb. I sat on the stairs and cried great, gulping sobs that made my head light and my heart heavy as a tombstone.

I’ve cried that way again this year as I’ve read about the children being murdered and tortured–tortured!–in Syria.

Those children–and so many more (remember Sandy Hook)–are the ghosts who haunt me this Christmas.

I will not avoid or ignore them. I will not pretend that they’re not there.

I will not try to distract myself by consuming more cookies and gifts and Hallmark Christmas movies.

I will not excuse myself (“that’s not my problem”).

But what will I do?

What do you think I should do? We should do?

Can we do anything?

Here are a few ideas going through my mind as I carry those children in my heart this Christmas:

I will love the little boy sleeping...

It feels like midnight is falling on the world.

I cannot bear to look at what is happening in places like Aleppo.

And I cannot see eye-to-eye with half of my fellow Americans who cast a different vote than I did on November 8.

Every time I spend five minutes on my news feed or social media, my vision dims. My mind goes dark. A shadow falls across everything I love.

In the darkness, next to my little boy’s bed, I sing Christmas carols to him as he falls asleep. My favorite carol to sing to him this year is ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.’ It reminds me that the angels sing their announcement of “peace on earth and goodwill to all” at “midnight.” It is in a dark hour that the light of heaven shines forth.

Everyone knows the first verse. The second and third verses, however, strike a chord with me this year. These words were written 167 years ago during a season of similar division...

The Christmas lights are brighter on a dark and dreary day.

The warmth of home is cozier when it’s cold outside.

Hot chocolate tastes better when you come in from shoveling snow.

Family is made dearer by difficulty, distance, and loss.

We plead with God to take away cold and darkness, hardship and loss.

What if these are God’s gifts to make life lighter, sweeter, warmer?

Grace and peace.