What I like best about the Olympics is that for two and a half weeks nations are meeting each other on the sports field rather than the battlefield. Lead stories on the news are athletic achievements, not wars or posturing over whose nuclear button is biggest. (Well, it used to be that way. At least in my memory.) The host nation goes all out to invite us to celebrate what is beautiful and up-lifting in its culture, and even the long, drawn out Parade of Nations is full of interesting geographical tidbits. (Like, who knew where Tonga was?) As a novelist, I revel in the personal stories of athletes, what they have overcome, and the network of people who got them there.

​​When the cultural celebration is somewhere I have lived (Brazil, England) or whose music and literature I love (Russia), I watch every minute. This Olympics is especially fun since I have visited Korea several times in the four years leading up to these games to spend time with our daughter and family living there. Last spring the hype was already huge. I snapped this mascot in a Seoul shopping mall.

​I travel a lot and took to e-books early because they didn’t take up space in the suitcase or add weight. I read on my phone. I carry it all the time; the screen is as wide as a column of newsprint; and I can change font size if I want (like at the beauty shop when I can't get my reading glasses over my ears with perm curlers in.) The only downside is turning pages more often, but to my mind, that’s a small price to pay for not carrying an extra device and always having a book with me.
 
Of course, I’ve had a Bible app. It was useful for travel, but underlining and annotating was awkward because, you could only underline whole verses. Often what I wanted to underline was the repetition of a key word several times in a series verses, or a phrase that stood out. Underlining the whole verse didn’t work.

Wm. Paul Young. The Shack. Los Angeles: Windblown Media,
​2007. 256 pp.
Reveiwed by Scott Horrell, Professor of Theological Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary.

​I resisted reading this when it first came out in 2007 and everyone was talking about it. It was very controversial (God as a black female?!) and I heard it wasn’t all that well written. But I found it well worth reading and forgave the didacticism and occasional purple prose for the stimulating way it dealt with ideas. (The plot works way better than The Case for Christ, which, despite agreeing with the conclusions, I didn’t like at all.)
 
“Papa,” the main character’s wife’s name for God, explains her appearance to Mackenzie this way: “I am neither male nor female, even though both genders are derived from my nature. If I choose to appear to you as a man or a woman, it’s because I love you. For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me ‘Papa’ is simply to mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning…To reveal myself to you as a very large, white grandfather figure with flowing beard, like Gandalf, would simply reinforce your religious stereotypes, and this weekend is not about reinforcing your religious stereotypes.” (205)
 

​I am currently visiting my daughter and her family in Seoul, South Korea. When I called to say good-by to my dad before leaving the US, he said, “I guess you haven’t been watching the news.” 

I am always being stretched by the technology out there. At the moment I am learning to access podcasts. I can listen on my phone while walking on the treadmill or elliptical at the club down the road and distract myself from my body’s complaints about the distance or speed—not that either of those is the least bit impressive to anyone who isn’t used to spending her day in front of a computer.
 
The two “channels” that have motivated me to figure this out are Quick to Listen from Christianity Today Magazine and Rewrite Radio from Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Writing.
 ​

 Again this year my friend Debi Alexander sent a Christmas letter that struck a chord with me. She graciously allowed me to post it here.
​
I watch the tear roll down his face, passing by the remnants of an eternally runny nose and the dustings of powdered sugar from a donut.  His look is earnest, pleading.  Because I took it from him--his idol, that thing that comforts, the promise of security: his food.

No matter how much I sing, “We eat one bite at a time” and return the bowl to him after each “Chew, chew, swallow,” I have threatened his vows [his commitment not to be hungry again].  And he’s mad.

​​I am racist.
 
I think we all are racist. In this world we cannot help but be influenced by the color of our skin. Much as I love my brothers and sisters at Solid Word Bible Church where we worshipped when we lived in Indianapolis, my white skin has given me different life experiences than their black skin. I cannot help but view the world from inside my white body.