To be healthy as a body, we need to start making The Other feel like The Every.

Several years ago, my friend LaTonya invited me to a gospel concert at her church, a predominantly African American congregation. Admittedly my first thought was, Will I be the only person there who isn’t black? Before I could voice my concern, LaTonya told me she’d invited several mutual friends, people I knew were of various ethnicities. Still, I was rather fixated on how out of place I was going to feel.

Why it stretches far beyond shared bloodlines and last names

“Are you watching CNN?†My friend Doug’s urgent tone on the phone interrupted our family vacation. We were away from our Minneapolis home visiting my out-of-state in-laws.

“What happened?†I asked, afraid of his answer.

“The 35W bridge collapsed. Hundreds of cars are in the river.â€

I hung up my phone and turned on the TV. My husband and I could hardly comprehend the images of that familiar road lying crumpled in the water. We tallied up the people we knew who might’ve been on the bridge. We tried calling friends, but the phone lines in Minneapolis were jammed and we couldn’t get through. So we watched and wondered and waited.

Holiness isn't a difficult task of faith, but a lovely reward.

I'm much given to regret in my encounters with others. I leave most meetings at my university saying to myself, I wish I hadn't said that. Then I spend the next week or two trying to come up with a way to undo my words and the view of me they must have created in others.

The novel I'm currently reading, Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (Picador, 2004), offers useful instruction in this matter. In it, John Ames, an aging pastor in poor health, records his thoughts on life for his young son, whom he doesn't expect to see grow up. Just about everything John Ames tells his son simultaneously challenges my spiritual complacency and affirms what I believe to be the essential nature of faith—it's not a behavioral contract with God, but the highest experience of pleasure and safety and utter liberation from worry, fear, and shame. What an impressive feat on Robinson's part—both as a writer and as an evangelist—to communicate the mandate to be holy in such an inviting way. Here's an example:

Why I'm trying to stop being a compulsive, neurotic bed-maker

The other day my husband made our bed. While this gesture isn't noteworthy in and of itself, my reaction to it is.

To give you some background, Barry grew up with a mom who made his bed every day. When he joined the Air Force and had to make up his bunk, he paid people to do it for him (or so he says). Then he married me, a compulsive, neurotic bed-maker.

Our system works well for us. As long as I can make the bed every morning exactly how I like it, life can go on.