Psalm 34:1-8

This psalm is hard to take.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders was denied a meal at a Virginia restaurant. I wonder who's welcome at our table.

How is it that the poems of a 17th-century aristocrat still resonate with us?

Social microhistories can capture big ideas. I’d like to write one on pickles, which are as fundamental to civilization as anything in Chesterton’s pockets.

Late in life, my mother confessed that she never enjoyed cooking. "But," she said, "I did take satisfaction in serving simple meals to my family." Well, there's no such thing as a simple meal anymore.

Whether we choose to believe it or not, we human beings are embodied creatures. There have been many times throughout the history of philosophy and religion when great thinkers have tried to minimize or deny the physicality of human existence. Simple phrases such as “mind over matter” and biblical passages such as 1 Corinthians 9:27, “but I punish my body and enslave it,” have contributed to the misleading belief that we are at our best as human beings when some spiritual core that is separate from our physical nature governs our lives.