Christians Don’t Have to Agree All the Time

I often hear Christians say, “Christianity is not a religion; it’s a relationship.” And I’m never entirely sure what they mean.

from Pocket https://bit.ly/3wUwNfK
via IFTTT

Can More Church Heal What Ails the Lonely Heart?

One of the things I’ve tried to do in this newsletter is take a pause from the news cycle and write about bigger, deeper trends that shape American life, including our marriage divides, the masculinity crisis, evolving sexual norms, the ways we argue, and how we forgive.

from Pocket https://bit.ly/40wrKQu
via IFTTT

The Case for Sleepovers

They are a chance for children to be silly and a touch subversive, and to get a glimpse of how other families live their lives. Sleepovers were mostly a nightmare for me as a child, and I mean that literally: I had nightmares every single time I slept over at a friend’s house.

from Pocket https://bit.ly/40qwJSz
via IFTTT

Scientists Tried to Break Cuddling. Instead, They Broke 30 Years of Research.

Oxytocin, often lauded as the “hug hormone,” might not be necessary to induce affection. Of the dozens of hormones found in the human body, oxytocin might just be the most overrated.

from Pocket https://bit.ly/3DGmyQ6
via IFTTT

That fertile stink

We’re prone to embroidering shrouds with false and flimsy ghosts, prone to telling untrue stories of our dead, rewriting them in our own image or in the image of some saccharine version of sanctity.

from Pocket https://bit.ly/3Y4PfxQ
via IFTTT

What the Longest Study on Human Happiness Found Is the Key to a Good Life

The Harvard Study of Adult Development has established a strong correlation between deep relationships and well-being. The question is, how does a person nurture those deep relationships?

from Pocket https://bit.ly/3JgAovY
via IFTTT

Misinformation, Humility, and Charity: How to Conference in Babel

Who decides what is misinformation in a church? How can such judgments be made in a disinterested manner under conditions in which assets and budgets are at stake and trust is low among different parties?

from Pocket https://bit.ly/3XCmAzT
via IFTTT

On Mothers

One of the hardest realizations in life, and one of the most liberating, is that our mothers are neither saints nor saviors — they are just people who, however messy or painful our childhood may have been, and however complicated the adult relationship, have loved us the best way they knew how, wi

from Pocket https://bit.ly/3klDrc9
via IFTTT

That’s It. You’re Dead to Me.

Last spring, my boyfriend sublet a spare room in his apartment to an aspiring model. The roommate was young and made us feel old, but he was always game for a bottle of wine in the living room, and he seemed to like us, even though he sometimes suggested that we were boring or not that hot.

from Pocket https://bit.ly/3Xccm9y
via IFTTT

May Sarton on How to Live with Tenderness in a Harsh World

This world is radiant with beauty. This world is also capable of bone-chilling brutality and the small, corrosive daily cruelties that salt our days with sorrow.

from Pocket https://bit.ly/3WCNY0A
via IFTTT