The English mystic and Benedictine nun Juliana of Norwich (1342–1414) had reasons enough to worry. She lived during the Black Death that killed 75 million people in medieval Europe. Many people interpreted the bubonic plague as divine punishment, but not Juliana. In her unapologetically optimistic view of life, she believed that God loved every person and that he would redeem every tear. In her bo...
2. If the House Is Messy, Clean It Up
Illustration
Daniel B. Clendenin
A second-grader once drew a picture of a fierce rhinoceros with a disturbing and unvarnished admission as a caption: "I'm as angry as a rhino!" Similarly, in her book, Amazing Grace; A Vocabulary of Faith, Kathleen Norris writes about a little boy who wrote a poem called "The Monster Who Was Sorry." In the poem the boy explodes about how he hated it when his father yelled at him. In anger he threw...
