Rachel Marie Stone's Blog, page 12
August 14, 2013
Why is it so hard to say things? Thoughts on Newspeak, AIDSpeak, and ObesitySpeak
I am not shy about using the saltshaker, and neither I nor anyone else in my family has any sort of problem with blood pressure. That’s because we mostly don’t eat things that come out of packages or from fast-food places (where someone else takes them out of packages) and the salt that is a […]
August 13, 2013
Three Reasons I Really Did Not Like Michael Pollan’s Newest, “Cooked”
1. The premise feels phony and staged: Pollan has said that he is “more at home in the garden than the kitchen” (In Defense of Food), but this modesty about his cooking skills is less than convincing to those who read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in which he prepared a highly local meal of wild pork […]
August 12, 2013
Anxiety is Love’s Greatest Killer
{see also: 5 Timeless Books of Insight on Fear and the Creative Process The Paris Review “Art of Fiction” Interview with Marilynne Robinson}
August 9, 2013
While You’re Signing That Change.org Petition, Don’t Forget to Look Up From Your iPhone
My friend Karen Swallow Prior has an award-winning essay up at Christianity Today’s This is Our City project called “How I Learned to Love my Literal Neighbor.” I told her it reminded me of this old Peanuts strip: Here’s just a taste of Karen’s essay: “Both of us had been raised in the country, in […]
August 8, 2013
Eat With Joy: Redeeming God’s Gift of Food on SALE for $2.99 on Kindle
Get it while the deal is still on! 
August 7, 2013
What Not To Do When There’s Nothing Much You Can Do
I don’t like goodbyes. For years, when my mother and I are about to say goodbye–when the visit is drawing to a close, say, or one of us (why is it always me?) is about to take off on a new adventure–we have picked inane fights with one another. We are quite expert at inane […]
August 5, 2013
When We Are More Interested in Evangelical In-Fighting Than Serious Issues of Justice
My dad used to tell a joke from the pulpit, back when “damn” was a much stronger word in evangelical/fundamentalist circles than it is now. It went roughly like this: “Millions of people die every day from preventable causes without ever having heard about Jesus’ love, and most of you don’t give a damn, and […]
August 2, 2013
Put Down Your iPhone, Moses, Not All Messages Come Via Text
I think this image really is worth at least a thousand words, which is the maximum recommended length for blog posts anyway–don’t you? (Yes–I am trying to get in some unplugged time of my own. Welcome to the magic of pre-scheduled blog posts. Here’s hoping you get some time and space and peace in your […]
August 1, 2013
The Unexpected Way of Jesus
Imagine: you have been waiting a long time for a surprise. You know that it is coming, but not what, exactly, it will be. But you have a lot of time to think about it, so you have started to imagine just what it will be. A expensive gift, a lavish vacation, or even a […]
