Where I come from, Shabbat begins at dusk on Friday nights, and ends when the first three stars become visible on Saturday evening. The twenty-five or so hours from Friday evening through Saturday evening are meant to be a time of restorative rest and reconnection with God, family and faith community, I grew up in…

It’s been an honor and a lot of fun to watch the discussion about If Only: Letting Go Of Regret travel around the web this week. Below you’ll find a wrap-up of the book-related posts – and a bonus. Yesterday, Ellen Painter Dollar shared a section of Chapter 9, entitled “When The Past Becomes The Present: Why Our History…

Last week, Leadership Journal magazine posted an article penned by a youth pastor who groomed, then sexually abused a girl in his youth group. He is now in prison for his crimes. The anonymous article was saturated with a self-pitying tone,  some horrifying reframing of his sin (statutory rape is not an “affair”), and a stunning lack…

A book is meant to create a conversation between writer and reader. A good book can spark conversations that echo far beyond its pages. By nature of its form and function, a book with 40,000 or more words (Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables clocks in at over 500,000 words) is an extended meditation on a subject…

“I wonder what the average age is of the group in this room.” Author and pastor Ian Morgan Cron scanned the group gathered in the chapel at Willow Creek last Sunday night for the experimental gathering dubbed The Practice. He was there to speak about, then lead us in communion. While there were a good number of twenty-…

When I tell people I’ve just met I’ve written a book about regret, many of them have an account of something from their past haunting them to share with me. New acquaintances aren’t prone to share their deepest, personal painful stories of regret unless they are sorely lacking any sort of social filter. I’ve been surprised…