Author: Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans
Jumping Off the Comparison Treadmill
“You’re so slim,” said the athletically-built woman sitting across the table from me at a local lunch spot. I told her how much I weighed. “But you are so tiny,” she persevered. I reminded her that I’m 5’ 8’ and have size 12 feet (don’t judge). “I know, I’m shrinking,” she said. Who was she seeing as she sipped her bowl of soup? It didn’t seem to be me, I thought. By any objective standard, my fr...Read More
Breaking News?
“Breaking news.” I don’t know about you, but I find myself increasingly unable, in a networked world, to figure out exactly what that means. A gunman in France holding people hostage. The President’s latest tweet. A vote on a budget. The scores from the NCAA tournament. They are all accessible online. Because I’m a journalist (or that’s my excuse anyway), I have a multitude of news apps on my phon...Read More
We aren’t defined by the chaos around us.
A mile or so down the road from where I live, there is a county-run farm. From the road, all you can see are fields by the entrance road—abundantly green in the spring and the summer, brown and trimmed in the fall and wintertime. Across the road, a home sits in the distance, a horse pasture in front of it and an old farmhouse nearby. It’s charming. In certain lights, it’s so beautiful that I (men...Read More
Missing in Action—The Voices We Don’t Hear
Last month, I researched a story on churches and the problem of sexual harassment and assault. As I proceeded, it became clear that voices were missing in the national dialogue we were having; those of African-American women and other minorities. (I reached out to a prominent African-American scholar to ask why – but that’s another story!) Ironic, isn’t it, that while a black woman launched the #...Read More
Sexual Harassment, Culture, and Healing
Matt Lauer. Charlie Rose. Representative John Conyers. Garrison Keillor (!) One by one, our cultural icons seem to be falling to a wave of allegations (and carefully sourced stories) of sexual harassment brought by women who, in some cases, seem to have kept their secrets for decades. Whether it’s the force of the #MeToo movement, a reaction to the election of a President who is himself accused of...Read More
When Your Parenting is Put to the Test
In a few weeks, my son will be on his way to college. At such a time, lots of parents take stock (just google “tips for parents of college students” or look for online essays on the topic). I’m a bundle of nerves, sublimating my anxiety into buying sheet sets and collecting boxes for the car ride, one which will result in driving home without the boy who, now almost a man, was the second-grade “ne...Read More
The Bible for Grown-Ups
What do Americans really think about the Bible? It’s tempting to think of it as a collection of stories not very relevant to our contemporary lives. But if we do think that way, we’d be missing a lot. Every year the Barna Group, a polling organization that has an interest in religion, comes out with some fascinating facts about the Hebrew and Christian scriptures (otherwise known as the Old and Ne...Read More
Is violence just a statistic?
Late Sunday night, a gun opened fire from a room in the Mandalay Hotel, killing at least 58 people attending a country music concert of around 22,000 on the Las Vegas Strip. More than 500 people were wounded. When police got to his room, suspect Stephen Paddock had killed himself. According to police reports mentioned in the New York Times, he had at least 10 rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammun...Read More
Explaining evil isn’t simple.
“The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it,” the first man, Adam, tells God in the third chapter of the Old Testament book of Genesis. Possibly that’s got to be one of the most creative excuses for the beginning of evil in the world since, well, the beginning of time. Be that as it may, the Genesis story—with its serpent, forbidden fruit, and lovely garden—i...Read More
Inevitable Poverty—What did Jesus mean?
There’s a lot of talk right now about how to make a difference in the lives of the poor. Some people say that the government should give citizens a leg up. Others speak of personal responsibility. Some thread a gingerly path down the middle. When you’re trying to work out how to approach poverty, and how to best help those in economic distress, it’s a challenge to know where to turn for guidance....Read More
Adaptive Identities
Who am I, really? Who are you? Good way to go crazy, you might be thinking to yourself about now. Bear with me for a moment. Think about how—once you started to think about it at all—the way you think about yourself has changed over the years. As a teenager, you may have done a lot to impress your peers, whether it was acing the science test, hanging out with the “cool” kids, or getting into a su...Read More
Forgiveness is for ordinary people.
Them. And us. That’s how we sometimes think about forgiveness, isn’t it? Jesus looked down from the cross and forgave his tormentors. Pope John Paul II forgave his would-be assassin. A father of a child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre offered forgiveness to the families of the killer within hours of the killings. Mothers have been known to pardon the men who shot their sons. As a writer, I co...Read More
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