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Pastor as Friend?
by Jasmine Smart | May 8, 2016 | Placeless
Pastors aren’t just professionals, they’re sisters and brothers in Christ with the rest of the congregation… so does that mean they can be friends?
15 Things I Learned From My Mother
by Caroline (Higgins) Nyczak | May 7, 2016 | Placeless
3. A clean sink goes a long way. Even if your carpet hasn’t seen a vacuum in months, do the damn dishes.
Playing Hot Potato with Kindness
by Josh deLacy | May 6, 2016 | Washington
I want selfless people to have blissful, perfect lives. When I argue with someone about selfishness—“it’s a virtue. The Golden Rule just makes betas feel better about not standing up for themselves”—I want to point to loving families and say, “See? This is possible. This is good,” but I can’t.
I Joined Online Dating…And I Met Someone and Now We’re Married
by Alissa Anderson | May 5, 2016 | Placeless
I know several people who met online and then made up a meet cute to tell friends and family. There’s less of a stigma around meeting online today, but it’s still not considered especially romantic.
What They Don’t Tell You About Campervans
by Ben Rietema | May 4, 2016 | Australia
He took a lap around the vehicle, got in the driver’s seat, and tried the key. The van roared to life… as if nothing had been wrong, as if it were just born, as if it were doing it just to spite me. I stared at the van in silence.
More Than a Fish Needs a Bicycle
by Sabrina Lee | May 3, 2016 | Grand Rapids
It all turned out fine. We weren’t abducted or murdered in our beds. Our host, whom we met later that evening, turned out to be sweet and ostensibly normal.
Scaling Down Giants
by Jacob Schepers | May 2, 2016 | Placeless
I’m not painting out such writers, or any writers, for that matter, to be dull; rather, what’s been more fascinating, and all the more reassuring, is that such giants were people first and writers second.
Pouring from an Empty Cup
by Katerina Parsons | May 1, 2016 | Placeless
People aren’t talking about the twenty-two-year-old case workers crying in their cubicles at the end of a particularly hard day.
The Comfort of Discontent
by Jeremy Smith | Apr 30, 2016 | California
“I know this sounds potentially ungrateful, but I don’t really know if I see my work as significant.”
Dear Loved Ones
by Heather Tills | Apr 29, 2016 | Placeless
I cannot help but think that we owe each other those small expressions of gratitude and that through them we are able, in small but meaningful ways, to break down these barriers that build up so easily in this life.
Memo on Hell
by Bekah (Williamson) Medendorp | Apr 28, 2016 | Placeless
They have entered the physical realm of the heaven but are too wrapped up in their own expectations to notice. They’ve allowed themselves to become too tainted with the promises of the world to recognize the promised land.
How to Road Trip to Florida, With Detours, Part 1
by Brad Zwiers | Apr 27, 2016 | Florida
Drive south until you reach a Ruby Tuesdays up in flames. At this point, you’ll be approximately seven miles from a beautiful cabin in the Smoky Mountains, but it will take you two hours to get there.
How the North Country Trail Taught Me to Love Ohio
by Nick Meekhof | Apr 26, 2016 | Placeless
Ohio is flat. Boring. Smoggy, smelly, and snooty. The cities sprawl into oblivion; legions of rusted warehouses and oily factories transition abruptly into very flat, very linear muck farms.
How To Get The Most Out Of Your Journalism (Or Basically Any) Internship
by Ryan Struyk | Apr 25, 2016 | Placeless
Welcome to 2016. Today, internships during college are becoming just as important – if not more important – than college classes and your GPA. Here are a few things I got right (and several I didn’t) and how to get what you want out of an internship.
Very Sophisticated Treatise on Musical Comedy
by Lauren (Boersma) Harris | Apr 24, 2016 | Placeless
Grease is a overly-simplistic, stereotypical, peer-pressure-driven, youth-glorifying narrative, but on Wednesday, I remembered that it’s one of my all-time favorites.
Playing Pretend
by Michael Kelly | Apr 23, 2016 | Placeless
I don’t remember what age we grew too old for make believe, but it was somewhere around middle school. The next logical transition was video games, which are basically still make-believe games, but more socially acceptable.
Atlases Shrugged
by Matt Medendorp | Apr 22, 2016 | Alaska
The first time I read Travels With Charley I learned, with great delight, that Steinbeck freely admitted to being a terrible navigator.
University Cost Continues to Rise
by Andrew Orlebeke | Apr 21, 2016 | Placeless
As most students and recent graduates know, college tuition has skyrocketed in the past 10-15 years. Private school tuition has certainly trended upward, but it is public university tuition in which the difference has been really pronounced.
Play
by Gabe Gunnink | Apr 20, 2016 | Placeless
I think that we must search out new pastures for play—Scottish dancing, Settlers of Catan, scuba-diving. When we begin to lose springiness in one area, we must seek it in another.
Old Habits Die Hard (I’ve Heard)
by Mary Margaret Healy | Apr 19, 2016 | Placeless
There isn’t some silver-bullet cure, some as-seen-on-TV solution that’s going to come into my accident-prone, easily distracted brain and take away the challenges of the life I want to live.
A Reevaluation: On the Disabilities Panel at FFW 2016
by Ben DeVries | Apr 18, 2016 | Grand Rapids
During a Friday morning panel at the 2016 Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, writer Jessica Mesman Griffith said something that would later come to trouble me.
Next Episode, Please
by Geneva Langeland | Apr 17, 2016 | Placeless
Turns out, you burn through a lot of episodes when campus is a forty-five-minute drive and twenty-minute walk away.
In Germany, A Language Test Not Just For Refugees
by Andrew Knot | Apr 16, 2016 | Cologne, Germany
In 2050, when the first histories of Germany’s integration project are written, the country will be graded on its efficacy in educating refugees in its native tongue.
I Joined Online Dating
by Cassie Westrate | Apr 15, 2016 | Placeless
Every time I have doubts, I ask myself where the line is between settling and compromising. Is this really not working? Are we really not right for each other? Or am I just unrealistic, idealistic, and CRAZY?
Unwilling
by Will Montei | Apr 14, 2016 | Washington, Wisconsin
My sister owned a copy of Hanson’s first album, “Middle of Nowhere,” that I loved to steal, along with her cream-colored boom box, and play on repeat while I circled the garage in rollerblades and sang along to words I didn’t really understand.
Hi, My Name Is
by Catherine Kramer | Apr 13, 2016 | Placeless
She is polite, she is professional. She has never met you before, and probably won’t interact with you outside of formal setting, or ever again.
Text START for Help
by Abby Zwart | Apr 12, 2016 | Placeless
In training, we were taught to give specific words to people’s feelings, to say “devastating” instead of “sad” or “furious” instead of “angry.” But those are just fancy words for the fairly small and basic set of emotions we face as humans.
How to Love Living in the Now When You’d Rather Stay in Bed for All of Time
by Elaine Schnabel | Apr 11, 2016 | Placeless
Some people live in the past, but I prefer the future. When I slip into bed every night, I am waiting for the next good thing.
Reasons I Have Complained About Adulthood
by Katie Van Zanen | Apr 10, 2016 | Placeless
The doctor asked me if I eat a balanced diet and exercise and I had to answer no on both counts. Banking. My health insurance coverage. I have no experience in shopping for used cars.
Public School
by Bart Tocci | Apr 9, 2016 | Massachusetts
Amazing. What utopia am I in? Is this what I’ve been missing at private school? Do all public schools work like this? You just walk into a party and someone comes up to you with a list of girls who want to make out? Unreal!
